


Sparkcracker Act II: Pas De Deux

by Nitrobot



Series: The Sparkcracker Suite [2]
Category: The Transformers (IDW Generation One), Transformers - All Media Types, Transformers: Beast Machines, Transformers: Beast Wars
Genre: Alternate Universe - The Nutcracker Fusion, Dark Fairy Tale Elements, Dystopia, F/M, Genocide, Non-Consensual Body Modification, Politics, Psychological Trauma, Unethical Experimentation, Worldbuilding, implied sexual violence
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-01
Updated: 2021-02-27
Packaged: 2021-03-08 23:21:58
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 32,748
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27454921
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nitrobot/pseuds/Nitrobot
Summary: Branded as a terrorist of Cybertron and sentenced to death for the crime of wanting to know the truth, Windblade finds that her only ally is the one who had been set to kill her; the so-called Sparkcracker, a mech condemned and twisted into a machine that slaughters bots in the worst way imaginable. Her scheduled execution goes wrong, and she escapes with the Sparkcracker into Cybertron's winter night. When she discovers his true identity, and the role he played in Cybertron's downfall so long ago, she knows that he is her only hope for rescuing her friends, stopping Rattrap and his mysterious plans for Metroplex, and returning home in one piece.Home, however, is not as perfect as it once seemed. While Windblade attempts to stay alive for the sake of her fellow Camiens, the Mistress of Flame prepares to make her move against Cybertron, knowing that Chancellor Rattrap will respond in kind. An intricate dance of politics and greed is weaved into everything, because Windblade's execution was to be the precursor of a galactic war that would see only one world surviving.
Relationships: Starscream/Windblade (Transformers)
Series: The Sparkcracker Suite [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1568893
Comments: 8
Kudos: 35





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to this year being Certifiably Insane, my original plans to post part 2 as a Christmas story have been utterly trashed. But I still wanted to publish what I have so far, just to prove that I haven't abandoned the series, so I spent November writing as much as I can (not exactly NaNoWriMo, but as best as I could manage with my attention wandering every five minutes >.<). I have about another four chapters ready to post over the next few days, as well as a sixth chapter in the works that I'll hopefully have ready by then. After that, I'll just have to work on the rest intermittently (since I'm not even sure how many chapters there'll be in total this time...)  
> Nonetheless, I hope the wait for this small part will be worth it, and that any newcomers enjoy reading part 1 if they so wish to :D

**Beginning of Act II**

**Pas De Deux**

  
  


Unlike most societies, Caminus did not quieten at night. If anything, its citizens were even more lively than during the day, emerging from their suites in droves to bathe in high-grade flowing from crowded bars and the neon light on every corner. Of course, most of Caminus was populated with actors, dancers, singers, all of which made their living in the hours where everyone else wasn’t working. The scientists and factory workers and bureaucrats paid the artists to keep them happy, and in turn the artists paid them for food and medicine to keep them healthy. In this way, they all supported each other. It was an equilibrium that the Mistress of Flame had strived to perfect ever since Caminus split away from Cybertron and found its own safe corner of the galaxy, where Primus could protect and provide for them. 

But as she stood watching the casual nightlife of her people from her chambers, far above the streets carved into Caminus’ skin, she did not feel pride or relief at how good existence had become for them all. Instead, as she had done for the last few hours, all she could feel was unease.

Light footsteps echoed behind the Mistress, but she did not turn towards them. There were very few bots who would be admitted to her chambers without invitation, and they were easy to tell apart from the weight of their peds. So she knew that it was Ember, her personal acolyte, waiting patiently to be acknowledged behind her.

“Have the  _ Hermitian  _ team returned contact?” The Mistress only now turned to her assistant as she asked, already known the answer as soon as she saw Ember’s face.

“Not yet, Mistress. And there is still no word from Cybertron itself.” Ember shook her head with her hands held together and digits entwined. “I’ve come to announce that the Torchbearers have returned.”

The Mistress closed her optics, allowing a small sigh of relief through her vents. “That’s something worthwhile, at least… send them in.”

Ember bowed her head as she retreated, and a klick passed before the six Torchbearers made their entrance. Pyra Magna led the procession, with Dust Up and Jumpstream flanking her. Skyburst and Stormclash followed, with the still-young Rust Dust demurely keeping her distance at the very back. Pyra’s expression was indecipherable as always as she took a knee before the Mistress, but the others seemed perturbed. Rust Dust in particular couldn’t hide her agitation as well as her sisters, almost losing her balance as she knelt. Just as she knew with Ember, the Mistress knew that the Torchbearers did not have good news to share.

“Mistress of Flame.” Pyra Magna had not lost any of her dignity in the stellar cycles spent away from home, did not even sound weary from her travels. ”It is with great regret that we declare our mission a failure. Just as before, we were unable to find any suitable planets in our search.”

Not a single planet in range of Caminus that could meet her needs… the Mistress had been prepared for this result, but it was still disappointing to hear. She had hoped that some might have evolved in the last few million years that could serve well, that she wouldn’t need to go forward with her original intentions. Despite her distate for what the so-called Cybertronians had become, she still hesitated at the thought of what she must soon do…

Then again, if the  _ Hermitian  _ was in danger, then it was already too late to reconsider. Nothing else to do but move onto the next step.

“Then there is nothing we can do about that,” the Mistress reasoned, watching Rust Dust let out a loud exhale of relief. “But your safe return is very fortuitous. Much has happened since your departure.” She turned away from the Torchbearers, and with her staff she summoned a hologram that was projected into the center of her chamber. Pyra Magna stood up to make way for it, and the other Torchbearers spread out around her as they watched the holographic planet in front of them, some of them letting out gasps of recognition. It was Cybertron, as it had looked millions of years ago before Caminus’ departure. 

“A vorn ago,” the Mistress explained, “I sent an envoy towards Cybertron. They consisted of three Cityspeakers, their bodyguards, two pilots and a medic. Up until a solar ago, we were able to contact them without issue. But now, they will not answer any summons we send. Not only that…'' The hologram of Cybertron was now accompanied by frames from Windblade’s last message, showing a vile feathered creature standing behind her. “It appears that our ancestral home has been overtaken by  _ organic  _ monstrosities, with no sign as to what has happened to the original inhabitants.”

There were three sounds of disgust from amongst the Torchbearers; Dust Up’s was the loudest, an unrestrained scoff, while Stormclash and Skyburst mirrored each other’s vocalisers with a muffled shudder between them. Rust Dust’s jaw had dropped open, and she only closed it when Jumpstream tapped her on the shoulder.

“What would you have us do, Mistress?” Pyra Magna asked, keeping her composure even as she averted her gaze from the left half of the hologram before her.

“For now? Nothing.” The Mistress dismissed the hologram display with a wave of her staff, satisfied that the Torchbearers understood the delicacy of the situation (and not wanting to scar them any further with the sight of technorganics). “You must first recover from your mission, and we will continue to attempt contact with Cybertron. If the envoy does not return our summons within a decacycle, we will assume that they have been captured or killed. In which case, we have a reason to strike back at Cybertron.”

The Torchbearers each nodded, all except for two. The twins shared a look before stepping forward. Stormclash was the first to speak.

“Forgive my doubts, Mistress, but-“

“Will that be necessary?” Skyburst finished her twin’s question.

The Mistress levelled her gaze on the two sisters, grateful that they had grasped the severity of what may come if Cybertron continued to ignore them. “I hope not,” the Mistress answered. “Which is the only reason why I am hesitating.” If she had proof that her delegation was harmed, she would have wasted no time in retaliating. But it would not do to start a war on their ancestral ground over what might only be a communication mishap. And what reason would Cybertron have to harm a peaceful envoy? The logical answers were all that kept her from making decisions she would surely regret. 

“Take your leave, Torchbearers. You’ve earned your rest. I will summon you if there is further news from Cybertron.”

Pyra Magna bowed just as Ember had done, and her sisters followed her example. “As you wish, Mistress.” She straightened and turned on her heel to leave, with the others following close behind. Only Rust Dust lagged slightly, still bent in a bow as Stormclash passed her. She let out one last hurried “Mistress” as she went to catch up with the others.

Once they were gone the Mistress couldn’t stop her frame from sagging, as if her mantle weighed as much as the whole of Caminus itself. It took the last of her strength to carry herself to the nearest chair, set away from the window that allowed her to look across the colony. She needed space away from the lights and noise, away from everything she stood to lose if she made just one mistake, just one wrong or rash decision. She told herself in times of hardship that Primus was only testing her and her children, that he would show them where to go when they needed him most. But after seeing what had become of Cybertron, Primus’ own body desecrated by those  _ things  _ that infested him, she didn’t have that hope to cling to anymore. Wherever Primus was, he was not there and he was not here. But he was surely watching her from somewhere, waiting for her to rescue his corpse, to ensure that his last pure descendants would survive and thrive. 

It only made her more sure of what had to be done. 

“Mistress?” This time she hadn’t heard Ember approaching, and she sat up with a start when she heard the acolyte’s meager voice. “Are you… in need of anything?” She lingered in the chamber door, clearly understanding that something was wrong. The Mistress forced herself to relax. This wasn’t the first time her acolyte had seen her under such stress- even so, she prided herself on hiding that which others didn’t have to see of her.

“No, Ember. I…” She danced the line between dismissing her and calling her forward. Ember was young, not having been forged until after Caminus’ exodus, but she was still someone to be trusted. Someone to confide in. The Mistress kept such people to a minimum, so they were a precious resource in times like this. 

“For the first time in centuries,” the Mistress sighed, “I find that I’m doubting myself. Was it a mistake to let Windblade and her friends go? Have I doomed them all just for the sake of satisfying my own curiosity?”

Ember blinked, unable to mask her uncertainty, but she braved entering the chamber to better comfort the matriarch.

“You had no way of knowing that contacting Cybertron would be a risk, Mistress. There was no sign of them being unco-operative in diplomacy. They accepted the invitation for the envoy, after all.”

The Mistress closed her optics, gliding thin digits across the top of her aching skull. “I should have known it would not be as simple as that, though.” With a harsh vent of air through her olfactories, she forced herself to regain her posture and bearing. The first step to being a good leader was appearing as one. “Did the Cybertronians also accept the gifts we sent them?”

There was a moment as Ember accessed previous comms from the  _ Hermitian  _ team through her data link. “It appeared so. I imagine they’d be within their vaults by now.”

The Mistress nodded, the smallest of smiles threatening at the corners of her mouth. “Good. We will wait for further contact from Cybertron.” She lifted herself from the depths with help from her staff, standing upright with her cape hanging languid behind her.

“And if we still hear nothing from the envoy?” Ember asked, her eyes following the Mistress as she stood once more before the skyline of Caminus. How beautiful it was at night. How loud and crowded, filled to bursting with bodies on every surface level… Cybertron would surely be the same, with even more creatures packed on top of each other. the Mistress circled the very top of her staff with an idle thumb, readying herself for when it was time to press the button concealed within it. 

“Then we’ll give Cybertron a reminder of who they’re dealing with.”


	2. Chapter 2

Numb, blind, and cold. Plagued by these three fates upon her awakening, Windblade found herself wondering if simply letting herself die would have been preferable. It would have been quick. It would have ended the nightmare… 

And it would have marked her a failure in the eyes of Caminus, of Metroplex. No. She was alive, by the mercy of Solus, and she would do everything and anything to stay that way until her job was done. 

Though her optics were still offline, her HUD the only light in the dark of her vision, her other sensors worked just fine. She could feel ice around her. She could taste a bleed in her mouth, her glossa pierced by the clenching of her own jaw. She could hear.. a voice. A hiss, something that lashed out like a knife in the blank wasteland she found herself in.

“Animals. Fragging…  _ animals _ …”

_ His _ voice. The Sparkcracker’s. The one who had almost killed her and, at the same time, also saved her. It sounded like he was coughing up something, spluttering on the ground, purging past scarred lips. Windblade saw this image clear in her mind even before her optics repaired themselves, slowly letting in the light of a silhouette bent over before her. The mech, the living statue and torture machine, was curling viciously into himself as the white powder beneath him turned bright blue. By the light of his curdled energon, Windblade could see his face, and even before it turned towards her she knew that it was a horrible sight. Not because of the vomit dripping down his chin over the thick solder marks, nor because of his burned optics, not because of any sign of hardship on his shaking body. It was the expression on his ruined face, the hatred in his optics, the fact that he was shaking not from the cold but from fury seething in his veins. 

And then it was gone. Not replaced or smothered by anything else, but simply drained away. His optics flickered, the light within failing to cut through the heavy blizzard falling around them both.

“You,” he choked. “You’re... not one of them.”

Windblade shook her head, slowly sitting up in the mass of white that had apparently broken their fall. It was pliable but ice-cold, and she heard it crunching around her as she shifted her weight.

“I’m… I’m Windblade,” she mumbled through numb lips. “I come from Caminus.” She didn’t know why she even bothered with the distinction, but then the mech’s optics flashed bright for a moment.

“The Titan colony?” he asked. And she nodded, even as she wondered if admitting such things so readily would just get her killed again. She was a convicted terrorist around here, after all, which was still better than being dead.

“Windblade…” The mech coughed, wiping at his mouth as he straightened into a weary kneel, his arms hanging like pendulums at his sides. “You were the one on trial.”

Windblade felt herself gulp, though the sound was lost to her in the roaring breeze. So he really had been the statue, watching her the whole time…

“I-I didn’t try to sabotage Metroplex,” she insisted. “They were lying, we’re not  _ terrorists _ -”

“I know that,” he snapped, like she was telling him something insultingly obvious. “Not that it matters, either way.” Then he grimaced, but not from anger. Something was giving him pain; as he clenched his jaw the skin around his chin seemed to split open even more, but this strangely seemed to give him relief.

“They had you in the courtroom,” Windblade said, slowly as she tried to figure it out for herself, buying precious little time for her processor to recover from what had just happened in the last breem. “Y-you… you were a statue.”

“I was,” he confirmed, listing to his left while he gave her his attention. “They left me like that when I wasn’t-” He stopped himself from going any further, and he squeezed his optics shut as if he was in agony. Though, he must have been from what Windblade had seen. The razorsilk had been painful enough over her limbs, but to have it over your optics, literally blinding you with pain…

Then she tensed, remembering the dress that Tarantulas had tricked her with that now lay tattered around her. The few remaining scraps didn’t hurt, but she’d been left with nothing but her base protoform to shield her from the mysterious elements. The thick white powder around her was curious as well as cold, and it seemed to be falling from the sky in a thin gauze over the sky- what little she could see of it at least, with the buildings and towers crowding in all around.

Oh Primus, were they still in Technotropolis? Was Rattrap sending guards after them already? What about her friends? And what was she supposed to do for armor?! 

“How did you free me?”

Her savior mech distracted her from all the questions with one she hadn’t even considered. She looked at him, observing his bruises and bloodstains in the darkness, flinching at how his wings twitched without rhythm. 

How  _ did  _ she break him free? Even if she had some idea, she didn’t want to remember… she didn’t want to think about what had been done to her, as bad as death would have been. Her spark still ached, violated and scared, and she just wanted to bolt her chest permanently shut. 

“I...I-I don’t… I don’t know what happened,” she said truthfully. She didn’t want to know, either. What Rattrap and Tarantulas and Airachnid had been trying to do; not just killing her,  _ humiliating _ her, scarring her with a kind of torture she didn’t even fully comprehend...

And they were going to do it to the others, too. This mech wouldn’t have been the only weapon at their disposal. Primus knew how many other Sparkcrackers were at hand, or if there were even worse ways to die in store for her crew.

“I need to go back up there.” She was on her peds before she even realised she was standing up, sinking into the soft white with her weight. “My friends-”

“You won’t be able to help them by getting captured again,” the mech growled, taking obvious effort to push himself upright. “Right now, your only priority should be staying out of sight.” He wheezed as he lifted one knee and his shoulder locked up, but when Windblade tried to offer help he instantly pushed her away.

“If we’re lucky,” he told her, trembling on two legs, “they’ll assume we perished in the fall. That means they won’t be looking for you, at least.”

“But they’re in danger!” Windblade only kept her voice hushed in case anyone really was looking for her, lurking somewhere in the dark. “They’re going to be tortured like me, a-and.. their sparks-!” 

“They won’t.” The mech caught himself as he stumbled, staring down at the ground as he wheezed. “If… if they were meant to come to me, then they won’t be executed. Rattrap is patient. He’ll find another way to deal with them. They’ll live until then.” 

He turned away from her as he forced his chassis upright, rotating himself around like each ped weighed as much as a Titan. “Don’t stay in the snow too long. You’ll rust.” 

Then, with a heavy groan, he started walking away.

“Where are you going?” Windblade tried to go after him, though her peds struggled to break through the white crust that he’d called snow. 

“Away from here,” he called at her, without turning around or stopping, each step a violent lurch forward. “Anywhere. You’d be smart to do the same.”

“You… you’re just walking away from this?!” Windblade knew she was appalled, even though she also knew that it was the most practical thing to do when a planet’s government was trying to catch you and slaughter you. The unleashed Sparkcracker didn’t even look in a state to be running anywhere, yet he still tried. Even if he fell down dead somewhere, he just wanted his grave site to be anywhere but here. She knew that even before he finally stopped in his tracks, turning around with just enough effort for one bleary optic to find her in the blizzard.

“What else am I supposed to do, Windblade of Caminus?” It was impossible to ignore the mockery in his tone, the way energon seemed to curdle once more at the back of his throat as he spat onto the snow. “Tell me, since you obviously know a better answer.”

“I don’t fragging know  _ anything!”  _ Windblade couldn’t stop the frustration coming out as a warped scream, even as she clenched her vocaliser, even as she knew she had every right to scream and cry and grab him by the shoulders and just shake him for refusing to help, refusing to even be  _ kind _ .  _ “ _ I come here because Metroplex needs me, and all I get is  _ lies _ a-and nonsense and I almost get  _ killed  _ in such an awful way-!”

The mech croaked, or snorted, or barked. Some kind of sound like metal grating in the depths of his tanks. It might have been a laugh, if it didn’t sound like something in dire need of repairs.

“If that’s enough to break you,” he told her, “then you’re not strong enough for a place like this. Go, then. Go find your friends. Find a way back home. Leave me to do the same.” He wasted the effort of lifting his servo just enough to give her a jolting wave of dismissal, his lack of faith in her so great that he didn’t mind showing it at the expense of his comfort. He’d went to such lengths to save her, halting his own escape to bring her with him, and yet he was ready to abandon her at the first opportunity. 

He reminded her of Chromia. Of Lightbright, and Hot Shot, and everyone else who thought she wasn’t strong enough just because it wasn’t how she was made to be. Why else would Cityspeakers need bodyguards, if they weren’t able to protect their own minds and sparks?

She loved her crew. She loved her friends, her guard, Nautica and Afterburner and Maxima and everyone else, and she would have gladly sacrificed herself to send them all back home safely. But she couldn’t do that right now. If she even had the energy to fly back up into the building, she’d just get herself killed. Or worse, all over again. 

She couldn’t save them, not yet. But she could, eventually. If she just stayed alive until then. 

Their lives weren't the only ones at stake, after all. Metroplex had more to tell her about Cybertron and Rattrap, even if she was far too late to save one from the other, and she was the only one who could hear it from him.

“You just said that I’ll only get caught again,” Windblade reminded the mech, taking wide steps through the snow to catch up to him. “That they think I’m dead.”

“I said that you better hope that they do,” he corrected her, not stalling once even though he clearly didn’t know where to go. “Otherwise, they’ll hunt you down. And they’ll find an even worse way than me to kill you.”

“Well… you’re not going anywhere without me.” Windblade caught up to him with a boost from her thrusters through the snow, and she skidded to a stop in front of him. He paused before he collided with her, but didn’t even look surprised by her sudden teleportation. Maybe he’d once done the same thing, when he’d had working wings. When he’d been free. If he ever had been. From the state of his frame, the way he could hardly walk despite all his effort, the way his default expression was hatred, he might not have even remembered such days, and that made Windblade want to stay with him. They had to help each other, because they were likely the only ones who would bother.

“Just because I haven’t killed you,” the scarred mech scoffed, “doesn’t mean I can keep you alive.”

“I don’t care about that,” she said, though she knew it was a lie. So long as she was alive long enough to save her friends, that was all she did care about. “I need to know… I need to know what’s going on, and I think you’re the only one who can tell me. Ever since I came here all I’ve gotten is questions and questions, and no one is answering any of them, and I don’t know what else to do because... if I don’t know what the Pit is going on, then how am I supposed to fix any of it?” She almost laughed at herself- as if she could even fix a faulty fuel line or broken bulb, let alone an entire planet rotten to the core- but the mech did not laugh first. He was utterly serious as he faced her, raising his chin as if to see her better through the snow.

“What kind of questions?” 

Every kind of question, Windblade wanted to say, any and every kind that could ever exist. The obvious ones, the stupid ones, the philosophical ones that could only be answered with an essay. But she decided to start with something small, yet immediately relevant.

“Well, for starters,” she said. “Do you... have a name?”

His jaw hung open in telling silence, and he didn’t look at her. His optics were dim things, red coals, and they were almost lost in the twirl of white flakes falling from the sky. If he didn’t have a name, if he couldn’t remember it, then what was she supposed to call him? 

“...Starscream,” he told her after some long moments, and it was the first sound out of him that wasn’t a growl or cough or wheeze. “My name… is Starscream.”

Windblade hadn’t been quite prepared for the answer, mostly because she didn’t even know if she would be given one. But there it was. Starscream. The mech who had saved her, in exchange for almost killing her. It was a standard Cybertronian designation, she’d probably heard ones exactly like it on Caminus, but even then… this one was different. She could tell from how he said it, the pride hiding in the quiver of his broken vocaliser. He was not just a mech, or a machine. He was something to celebrate, to be worshipped, and he still held onto that small belief despite what he’d been turned into. Windblade was starting to regret blocking his path, especially as a light started to fall down through the crack of wherever they’d been walking towards.

“Can you tell me what happened here, Starscream?” she asked, trying to give his name the proper respect even as she whispered. “What… why this is all happening? Why Cybertron is like this?”

Starscream looked beyond her, into the haze of snow and ice that shielded them and everything else from view, and his optics flashed a brilliant crimson that was like searchlights through the fog. With only his silhouette showing through before her, he almost looked normal and whole. 

“We should find somewhere to hide,” he croaked, exhausted at last. “Then... I’ll tell you everything I can.”


	3. Chapter 3

“You IDIOTS! IMBECILES! Fragging slag-headed  _ MORONS _ !”

Dinobot had been a loyal servant of the Technorganic High Council for almost two centuries now- not including a few short decades of training under the watchful optics of Inferno and Rattrap himself- yet he’d never heard the Chancellor sound so incensed before. Even standing outside his office with the thick walls between himself and Rattrap, Dinobot could feel those walls shake from the strength of his fury. The volume alone would have convinced anyone that it was in fact three voices screaming in unison, but of course Dinobot knew better. Of the three minds Rattrap controlled, only one was ever coherent. 

But the one thing Dinobot didn’t know was what had made the Chancellor so furious in the first place. He knew all about the rogue Camiens (Velocity and Hot Shot, still missing since the trial), because he was one of the mechs in charge of retrieving them. Regrettably he’d had no sightings of either of them, and he’d been prepared for the Chancellor to be in a sour mood when he came to give him an update on the search. 

This was more than just a sour mood. The environment leaking through the office door was practically toxic. 

“Do you have ANY FRAGGING IDEA what you’ve allowed to happen?!” Rattrap raged on, dull thuds undercutting each snapped word as he seemed to stamp across the floor. “Because of your  _ incompetence, _ your-!”

“Chancellor, sir, please calm down,” a new voice cut in with rather suicidal intentions, the familiar simpering drawl of Inferno making Dinobot grimace from the sound. “We understand that-” 

“ _Do not interrupt me, Inferno!_ ” There was a sharp crack as something solid was thrown. “You… you… slag-sucking sycophant!” Rattrap let loose a snarl that almost made Dinobot flinch even from a distance. Then there was a heavy pause, others in the room not wanting to speak in case they interrupted the Chancellor again, but his rant had seemed to reach its heated conclusion. 

“We understand that you’re upset, Chancellor.” Quickstrike’s firm tone betrayed only a slight spot of rusted uncertainty in his vocaliser. “We take full responsibility. But even if Windblade has been lost, everyone believes she’s-”

“I don’t CARE about _her!_ ” Rattrap shrieked, “I care about my MACHINE!”

“The lean, mean, rarely-seen machine!” a giggling chitter joined in. “Get it? HAHAHAHA!”

While the Chancellor’s two heads spat through their denta, Dinobot took a moment to understand what he’d just heard. How had Windblade escaped as well? Why hadn’t he been informed of it? The only reason she was still on Cybertron was because two of her conspirators were still on the run. As soon as they were apprehended, they were to be ejected along with her and the rest of them. But now the process would be even more delayed with their ringleader missing, and there was no knowing what tricks she might try to pull while on the run.

And the machine, of course, Rattrap was still enraged over her attempt to sabotage Metroplex... or was it only an attempt? Did the Camien terrorist somehow succeed, and now the Titan was like a time bomb lying in wait to level the planet? Or had she set something in motion that she could easily complete before being caught once more? Rattrap’s plans for the Titan were already fraught with enough problems and complications, and it was vital that he became habitable before the winter got even worse. With shelter on the surface becoming so scarce, and the underground crowded with Cybertronians who would slaughter any technorganics they came across...

Dinobot didn’t want to think about it any longer. Though it served him right for eavesdropping in the first place, learning things he clearly wasn’t supposed to know yet for his own good. 

Even if no-one caught him lingering outside the door, it felt wrong because it  _ was _ wrong. The Chancellor was under enough stress without having to deal with soldiers getting themselves killed over idle curiosity. And, above all, the Chancellor knew best. The last five centuries were more than testament to that.

So, if the Chancellor decided to retaliate against another interruption by upending the rest of his office through the door, Dinobot could really do nothing about it.

“Who is it?!” Thankfully Rattrap sounded more surprised than offended at the sound of a tight-knuckled knock against his door.

“Dinobot, sir.” The mech kept his spinal strut taut as he announced himself, faintly remembering old youngling rumors that at least one of Rattrap’s six optics was able to see through walls to a certain distance.

“Well, don’t just stand out there,” Rattrap growled, “come in already!”

“And close the damn door behind ya!” his left head added. “Freezin’ my aft off already!”

Dinobot seized upon the invitation, while his shoulders relaxed and claws curled out from the nest of his palms. The first thing he saw was the Chancellor himself, seated at his desk like he was melting into the chair, the grand window behind him showing the snowy night sky. Then there was a slight dent in the left wall, the mark of whatever had been flung in anger, but Dinobot’s gaze did not linger to find out what. Instead his attention was on the audience that crowded the office, making it feel like a penthouse broom closet.

As expected the four mechs of Rattrap’s personal guard were present, as well as Ratbat and, for some reason, Airachnid. Dinobot didn’t have much personal experience with Tarantulas’ daughter, mostly because she was Tarantulas’ daughter and that was enough to keep most sane bots away from her if they could help it. Even Ratbat, eternally unflappable despite how his wings always seemed to be moving, kept a good distance from her as she stood by Rattrap’s desk; back straight even with her many legs retracted by her spine, servos folded there to hide her talons, respectful to a fault. She didn’t even glance Dinobot’s way as he closed the door behind him. 

“You three,” Rattrap pointed a digit to his elite squad and waved it between Inferno, Rampage and Quickstrike in turn, “will be personally responsible for tracking down our lost property. I want every inch of Technotropolis scoured, and every city at all corners of the planet searched too. Understand?”

Such a feat couldn’t possibly be accomplished by only three mechs, but they each nodded with varying degrees of fealty. Rampage only chucked his chin in acknowledgement, while Inferno almost doubled over in a submissive bow.

“We won’t let you down, Chancellor,” the overgrown ant promised, and of course he was the first to scurry out of the office to get to work. That left Ironhide, always the odd one out, as the only one still in the office awaiting orders or dismissal (or maybe another mystery object thrown in his direction). Dinobot had never understood why Rattrap would allow a Cybertronian to have such a privileged position, and had only once been brave enough to ask about it. The Chancellor had smiled, his oversized denta showing full over his curved lip, and then told Dinobot the story of Ratbat’s role before the end of the Golden Age, when Cybertronians had tried to sweep technorganics out of existence by simply pretending they didn’t exist. When they realised that the new species would not simply go away, those in charge reacted with utmost cruelty and anger. If the organics would not disappear on their own, then the Cybertronians would  _ make _ them disappear. 

That was what Ratbat’s appointment to Senator so long ago had been all about. Some had been foolish enough to think it was a sign that things would improve, that the Cybertronians were beginning to understand, but it was nothing more than a stunt for the Senate’s own amusement. They wanted to put a freak on display, to show the rest of the planet that technorganics  _ deserved  _ their treatment. If Ratbat tried to institute reform for his people, he was ridiculed. If he did nothing and simply agreed with everyone else, he was shown as an example of what technorganics  _ should  _ be. Quiet. Obedient. Nonexistent. 

Rattrap had described all of this to Dinobot, and only then did he understand why Ironhide had been given his role. It wasn’t cruel in this case, though. It was a seat of honor, to be in Rattrap’s confidence even as an outsider. Nobody laughed at Ironhide. Nobody judged him for the crimes of his ancestors, not even Dinobot. Ironhide had been born just as the Organic Age began, after all. Not part of the Well’s last batch, the first generation of true innocents like Transmutate (Rampage’s strange choice of sparkmate, who was another story all in herself), but young enough that he hadn’t yet been entrenched in the sins of his ancestors.

That was another piece of knowledge Rattrap had gifted to Dinobot, but not one that was to be repeated to anyone else. The Well had a certain reputation that had to be maintained.

“As for you, Ironhide...” Rattrap paused as if he wasn’t quite sure what to have him do, or what he could trust him with. “You can keep an optic on the prisoners we still have left. And if any more of them get away, I’ll hold you personally responsible!”

“Understood.” Ironhide was always a mech of few words, and this was the only one he said as he took his leave.

“And  _ you two _ ,” Rattrap visibly gnashed his denta as he faced Ratbat and Airachnid. “Just… get out of my sight. And get your sire in here, Airachnid! I don’t care how busy he says he is!”

“Yes, sir.” Airachnid’s legs scraped together on her back, and her optics stayed glued to the floor as she departed with the Senator behind her. The edge of Ratbat’s wing grazed Dinobot’s shoulder, but otherwise the two of them just ignored him. Dinobot didn’t mind; he preferred being invisible. It made his job easier, even at the expense of most everything else.

When the office door clicked shut for the third time, leaving only two mechs alone behind it, Rattrap seemed to deflate with his head cradled in his hands, the other two hanging limp on his shoulders. 

“More bad news, Dinobot? You too?” Exhausted of all anger, righteous and indignant, he could only speak in a defeated monotone that made Dinobot wish he had  _ something  _ good to say. But then he would have been lying, which would have been even worse.

“I’m afraid so, Chancellor. We still haven’t found the other two Camiens who managed to slip away.” 

“These ones can’t even fly!” Rattrap’s helm snapped up like he was trying to make himself dizzy, and the two at his shoulders were like bobbleheads as their body moved their servos around with renewed fury. “How fragging difficult can it be to find TWO aliens between a few miles of city! How has NO-ONE seen them?!” He sprang up onto his peds to start pacing back and forth behind his chair, the snowflakes beyond the window disappearing amidst his silhouette. Looking at him in profile, the finer details of his deformity obscured in shadow, almost made him seem normal. But if he was truly ‘normal’, then he wouldn’t have been chosen to lead. 

“We think that the trial broadcast may have encouraged certain Cybertronian cells to shelter them for the time being,” Dinbot informed him, referring to ‘we’ as his whole task force when really he meant himself. “But we’re searching beneath the surface as well as through the cities, and we’ve offered a reward for any useful information.” Monopoly had been oh so generous as to offer a few drones for the subsurface patrols; even he knew how reckless it was to send actual people down there without knowing what was in store (and he also knew he couldn’t just take all the credit for himself if Camiens were found down there, hence why he only offered ‘a few’ of his drones). 

“What kind of reward?” Rattrap’s pacing had paused, and he looked at Dinobot with all three heads (well, barring the one that was never awake).

“Credits. Accommodation upgrades. State-of-the-art tech.” Anything the council could easily spare and that everyone else would clamor for. “They can choose whichever one suits them best, only once the Camiens are found.”

“Yes, yes… whatever works.” Rattrap’s brief burst of energy seemed to subside, and he returned to his seat with a heavy sigh that just about masked the sound of his frame falling into place. There he sat, rubbing a hand over his optics with snowflakes glittering in his shadow, while Dinobot stood with nothing else to offer, nothing to convince the Chancellor that all was not yet lost. Then, briefly, Dinobot wondered if he should ask about Windblade, or Metroplex; if he was even allowed to ask about such things. He hadn’t been told about either of them, after all. With the situation so delicate, it made sense that bots would only be told what they needed to know. And, right now, Rattrap had decided that Dinobot did not need to know.

Even so, he felt like he had a right to at least inquire. As far as he knew, he had been the one to warn Rattrap about Windblade in the first place. He could help find her, if he knew to look out for her. He could be useful, if he was only allowed to be.

“Chancellor,” he eventually said, “may I ask about what is being done with the other prisoners?”

Rattrap’s hand covered one half of his face, and the other half curled inwards in consideration. “What’s being  _ done... _ ?”

“You had said they’d be deported back to Caminus,” Dinobot clarified, “yet we still have them detained within the building. If they are as dangerous as we fear, shouldn’t we remove them from the planet’s surface as soon as possible?” 

That made most sense to him, what with all the resources and time wasted in just keeping them locked up when they were somehow able to escape anyway. They still had the Camien ship on lockdown on the Hydrax Plateau, another waste of resources spent on guarding the ugly thing. Why not just load them all up and send them on their way? When the other three were eventually re-captured then they could take shuttles back home, or have another delegation come rescue them. Keeping these terrorists all separated was the key, Dinobot was sure, and most of all he just wanted them  _ gone _ . Just the thought that they were somewhere fall below his feet, plotting murder and mayhem and Primus-knows what else… it was enough to give a grown mech nightmares, and it did.

“Yes, yes, I’m... in the middle of negotiations with their leader,” Rattrap said after a short pause, folding his servos together to hide his claws even as his fangs framed a sharp frown. “The so-called ‘Mistress of Flame’.” 

“More like Mistress of  _ Lame _ ,” his left head snickered, “hahahaha!”

“Despite her disgust for our kind,” Rattrap continued after slapping the loudmouth across his snout, “she seems willing to pay for the safe return of her own. After all, she did gift us with some very interesting tech just for letting the terrorists in. We shall see what she offers for them first.”

“I see.” That also made sense to Dinobot, though it did nothing to calm his spark. What if this Mistress was stalling while planning to send an army after Cybertron, to finish the job her first delegation had failed at? Surely she wouldn’t just admit defeat and take her people back with an apology for trying to kill Cybertron’s entire leadership, and the Chancellor was too smart to not know that for himself. No wonder he was so exhausted, trying to keep himself and his soldiers and all of his people alive through this latest crisis. This was what he got for his generosity, for trying to think better of their other ancestors. 

“I just hope her offer makes all the trouble worth it,” Rattrap added with a weary sigh, as if talking to himself. “Especially when this is all my fault. Foolish to let them come here. Foolish to think they would have accepted us...”

Dinobot blinked as Rattrap shuttered his optics- even his disrespectful left face looked solemn for once. He didn’t know what to say, if he was supposed to say anything. The Chancellor had never been one who needed reassurance or platitudes. Then again, he’d also never had to deal with threats like this before. The Gestalt Rebellion hadn’t come from beyond the stars. 

“It is no-one’s fault that they betrayed us, Chancellor,” Dinobot eventually said, after searching a few long moments for the right words. “You showed them every kindness and courtesy. We couldn’t have known that they would treat us like… the Cybertronians did.”

He had known from the very beginning that they couldn’t be trusted, of course, but even he had more tact than to gloat about such a thing in front of his superior. It didn’t make him feel better to have known, anyway. For the first time in his life, he had wanted to be wrong. 

“But we should have known,” Rattrap insisted. “ _ I  _ should have known. I should have… never mind.” He shook his head, the other two listing left to right in turn, and sat as upright as his spinal strut would allow. The mask of the leader was secure once more. “Was that all, Dinobot?”

There was still much more in his mind, much more to say, much more to ask- but Dinobot knew that now was not the time. “Yes, sir. I shall continue my search for the other two escapees.”

“Good, good, make yourself useful… more useful than some idiots around here, at least.”

Dinobot did not look back as he left the office, though he wished he’d had when he saw who was standing outside as if he was waiting for an audience of his own.

“Dear, oh dear.” Tarantulas scraped dirt from one of his talons with a  _ tsk  _ from his fangs. “The Chancellor’s heads must all be spinning from the recent excitement.”

Dinobot saw no point in hiding his scowl from the scientist. “You call the escape of dangerous alien terrorists  _ excitement _ , Tarantulas?”

“More exciting than the usual Cybertronian riff-raff, at least.” When he shrugged his back legs clacked together, thicker and far more threatening than his daughter’s (not to say that Airachnid’s own were not a sight to be feared by anyone with sense). “Though, of course, I’m one of the few who can afford to have a sense of humor about the whole thing.”

“And why is that?”

Tarantulas laughed, and the fangs around his jaws seemed to squirm like they were alive. “Because I know all is not as bad as it seems. And I bring news that will surely turn all three of the dear Chancellor’s frowns upside-down.”

“Is that so.” Dinobot didn’t treat it like a question, and neither did Tarantulas himself. 

“You’ll see for yourself soon enough, I’m sure.” The spider moved as if he was going to place a hand on Dinobot’s shoulder, but just as the mech flinched away his hand went instead to the office door. Dinobot was more than happy to move out of Tarantulas’ way, still reeling from the possibility of being  _ touched  _ by him. 

Cybertronians were not, and never would be, his friends. But some technorganics were just as bad. Not that he could ever admit such a thing, especially when the Chancellor’s trust was now at a premium. Dinobot had already put himself in an unfortunate position with his knowledge about Windblade, even if Rattrap wasn’t yet aware of it. He wanted to know what Tarantulas had to say, what ‘good news’ he apparently had in store. But Dinobot couldn’t know, for his own good. As the spider had said, he’d see it for himself eventually. When it was time. For now, the smart option was to simply leave and do his job. 

That would be enough. For now.


	4. Chapter 4

It was a long walk away from the long drop, through the snow and spotlights of a city at night and at full alert. Starscream never spoke once, not as he crawled through ditches under bridges nor inched alongside giant pits filled with half-frozen water. Windblade wanted to ask about it all -how different Cybertron’s landscape was away from its capital, how different it was from any part of Caminus- but she knew that Starscream was in a delicate state as it was. His body was falling apart, his mind probably not in much better shape. He wasn’t talking for a reason, and she knew better than to rob him of the silence he likely craved. She only mumbled to herself, to distract her from the stabbing pain in her wings and back that flared up with every step forward. Even if flying had been a safe option, she knew she was in no shape for it. Besides, she had no way to carry Starscream through the skies with her. Just one look at his own wings made it clear that they were currently nothing more than giant dead weights stapled to his back. He might have been better off just ripping them entirely from his spinal strut, just to let him move a little faster. 

Though, if Windblade was in his position, would she take such action and ensure she could never fly again? Of all the awful things that had happened to her that night, it was the mere thought of that happening which made her shudder the most.

There was a close call at the far end of one of the bridges they lurked under- a checkpoint had been set up to screen anyone trying to cross. Starscream didn’t even curse at the sight of flashing lights and heavily-armoured technorganics stationed to capture them, instead he simply turned around and started climbing out of the ditch at its middle point. His claws made rough footholds out of the sloped metal walls, and they were deep enough that the darkness covered them both as they clambered up into the unknown that waited at the top. From her new vantage point Windblade couldn’t help looking over at the checkpoint, the vague figures likely under orders to apprehend her- if not outright kill her- on sight. Then she moved on, before they could notice they were being watched. 

On the other side of the ditch there was some kind of sprawling suburb, though every other building seemed to have collapsed into rubble-filled shells. It was one of these buildings that Starscream hobbled into, dragging himself along the wall of the cramped alleyway and falling through the nearest hole before Windblade could offer him any help. Inside, the place was almost gutted with no lingering sign of what it once was. A shattered staircase led up to a mezzanine drenched in shadow, and Starscream insisted on pulling himself up those stairs just so he could seat himself at the very edge of the balcony, where the bannisters had long since crumbled away. Windblade stayed at the bottom of the steps, her optics scanning the decayed walls for any point where someone else could enter and ambush them.

“Is it safe here?” she asked, only loud enough for Starscream to hear her from his place dangling above her. “Are we far from Technotropolis?” It felt like they’d walked half the length of the planet, and even if they had it still wouldn’t have eased her anxieties about Rattrap or one of his soldiers lurking around every corner.

Starscream still didn’t speak. Not at first. He started with a growl, a rough gargle of his vocaliser’s circuitry as if it had forgotten how to form words. Then, eventually, a single scarred word emerged from his scarred mouth.

“Iacon.”

Windblade stared up at him, hating that this was yet another thing she didn’t or couldn’t understand.

“It is  _ not  _ Technotropolis,” he explained, saying the city’s false name with such scorn that Windblade almost flinched. “It is Iacon. It always has been, and it always will be.”

Windblade gulped, slowly understanding yet another one of Rattrap’s lies. He’d changed the name of the city to one that suited him, and his kind, better. But Starscream still remembered its true name, and he wouldn’t give it up without a fight.

“Okay… are we far from Iacon?” she corrected. Starscream’s optics, bright red pinpricks that ebbed like lava, narrowed as they stared down at her.

“Far enough,” he told her, finally pointing his gaze elsewhere. “I’d get off the ground floor if I was you. If this place collapses, you won’t want to be underneath it all.”

Windblade felt her cables tighten, when they were already so taut they were likely to snap at the slightest pull, but she understood that it was his way of inviting her to join him upstairs. So she made her way up, taking each step two at a time with the fear that the whole structure might collapse under her weight. Though Starscream had climbed them just fine, and with all his grotesque modifications he easily weighed twice as much as she did, Windblade didn’t trust anything at that moment, especially not ancient infrastructure on a planet that clearly hated her on principle.

She reached Starscream’s spot as the floor beneath her creaked, and carefully sat down on the other side with a sufficient gap between them both, wide enough that their EM fields wouldn’t overlap. He watched her sit, his optics flicking between her and the gap she’d left, and her legs folded securely under her frame rather than dangling loose over the edge of the mezzanine. Without the familiar security of her armor, it was hard not to curl into herself just to give some feeling of coverage. Pit, she could deal with being stripped to her protoform so long as she had Chromia to keep her safe, or Maxima or Afterburner or…

She’d left them behind. She’d had to. But Primus, she felt guilty for it. She’d elected to save her own aft first, and according to Starscream she was supposed to feel  _ grateful  _ for it, that at least one of them had managed to escape.

When the mech looked back to her a second time, she was ready to challenge his gaze with her own. Blue against red. She remembered that his spark had been red, as it had flared to life in response to her own. Which made sense, as the light from your optics was the same light from your spark. That was the only glimpse Camiens were ever allowed into another’s chamber, usually. That was how it was supposed to be. 

Windblade didn’t want to face those optics anymore, but Starscream looked away before she could. She couldn’t tell what else had caught his attention, if anything at all. Likely he just wanted to not look at anything. 

“What do you want to know, Windblade of Caminus?” he asked. The way he said her name, like it was a title, seemed like it was meant to be mocking without sounding like it. Maybe he was just too exhausted to put the extra effort through his vocaliser. 

“You don’t have to call me that,” she muttered. “Just Windblade is fine.”

“Just Windblade. Well, then.” He might have been smiling as he said it, but he didn’t turn his head and Windblade didn't think he had much to be smiling about. She'd never know what face he was making, but everything else he could tell her, all the questions he could finally answer for her...

Where to even start? She wanted to know  _ everything _ , even the things she’d be better off not knowing at all. Especially those ones. She knew why they’d tried to kill her. She knew why the technorganics would hate her, and her friends, just because of their shared ancestors. But there was plenty left that she was still left to wonder.

“Why… why were you a ‘Sparkcracker’? What did they do to you?” She felt her glossa freeze on that terrible name, and Starscream clearly flinched upon hearing it.

“You don’t waste time with small talk, I see,” he muttered.

“If it’s too difficult to talk about, you don’t have to-”

“No,” he interrupted swiftly, a warning against even finishing that sentence. “I’ll tell you. You’re the only person I  _ can _ tell, right now. And if I wait too long to get it out… I might lose it forever.” He inhaled, his vents making harsh grating sounds as they tried to open through all the rust. Preparing for the sad story he had to tell.

“They fitted my chest with hydraulic pumps.” His hand went to his chest, the worn-down tips of his claws settling over the center of his sealed chamber. 

“The edges of the plates were sharpened to a razor point.” Fingers to the seams between the armor plates, so filthy with long-dried energon that if he cut himself on his own metal the stain would have been indiscernible. 

“My mouth was soldered over.” He touched his lips, two fingers trapping a hiss as he grazed the scars still present.

“My optics blinded.” He did not cover them, instead placing his hand on his forehead as they clicked shut on their own. And whatever those optics saw made him grimace, like he was waking from a dream or nightmare, as if he feared that if he kept them closed any longer he would wake up truly blind all over again. In fact, when they flew open, they immediately looked left to see if Windblade was still there. At the sight of her, he seemed to relax ever so slightly.

“That answers  _ what _ they did to me,” he finished, leaving Windblade a chance to change her mind on whether she wanted to know the other answer. And she did. 

“But…  _ why _ ?” Seeing what was done, almost being a victim of it, was horrifying enough, but it meant nothing without knowing the reason behind it all. Starscream seemed to appreciate that, or was just impressed by the extent of her morbid curiosity. Either way, he decided to grace her with his full attention this time. 

“You already know that Cybertron wasn’t always like this,” he began. “It wasn’t a perfect place. No such thing exists. But… it was peaceful. I’d thought it was, at least, until I stepped outside for the first time and had my first encounter with a technorganic.” And try as he might, he wasn’t quite able to mask his disgust on that last word. Though, Windblade could hardly blame him with what the likes of Rattrap had done to him.

“So they weren’t lying. About... being treated badly.” She spoke cautiously, treading carefully, trying to dig for the unbiased truth beneath his steel-thick anger. Starscream huffed, a low-effort sigh. 

“That much was true. People had their reasons to scorn them. Mostly superstitious slag that only made them feel a little better about themselves… but that’s a long enough story on its own. The first thing to understand is that  _ I _ was not one of the cruel ones. I never minded the organics. Not as much as others, at least.” He curled his lip, as if wanting to bite down despite the pain he’d give himself, and it seemed he was having trouble finding what else to tell her.

“If you weren’t bad to them,” Windblade tried to prompt, “then… why did this happen to you?” But despite her caution, she knew she had said the wrong thing just a nanoklick too late. Starscream masked his glare under nothing, and all the scars in the universe couldn’t have masked his scowl. 

“Are you saying my imprisonment was a valid punishment?” he confronted. “That I  _ deserved  _ this fate?” He was so incensed that his wings, which seemed useless in every way from damage, could be seen lifting up at a sharp angle like they were ready weapons. Windblade had felt her own do that sometimes, but she’d never been furious enough to lift them up so far...

“No, no, no,” she insisted with the urge to pull away from him, for her own safety. “I… no, I didn’t mean…” Her head spun left and right like it was on a faulty joint, protesting her mistake no matter how dizzy it made her, and her own wings almost overlapped from how low they were hanging from her spinal strut. The movement brought her pain, of course, but it was nothing compared to what she could suffer from offending Starscream. He could just get up and walk away, without another word about anything. Or just perish in front of her out of stubbornness. He seemed like the kind of mech who would do that.

But he did neither of those things. When Windblade’s head finally stopped shaking its plea for forgiveness, she found that his own was hanging low. He stared down at the ground floor over the edge of the landing, as if contemplating jumping, but his legs were frozen. 

“Of course you didn’t,” he said, quiet and exhausted, utterly drained from that single moment of emotion. “Well. The revolution was nothing but chaos. It didn’t matter if you had organic friends, if you housed them and fueled them. Everyone and anyone mechanical was a target. Especially those born from bonds.”

Windblade felt herself gearing up to ask about the ‘revolution’, if he meant the gestalt rebellion Rattrap had talked about or something else entirely, but the questions were instantly pushed aside in favor of another. She’d heard the phrase ‘bond-born’ before, from Rattrap’s own mouth. 

“Bonds…?” She prompted Starscream for explanation, preparing for some look of condescension or ridicule in turn when it must have been something so obvious to everyone else, but he hardly even glanced up at her.

“Why else would Rattrap devise such a complicated way of execution?” he went on, as if that would answer her. “It’s a spectacle. It’s a  _ joke  _ to him, a...” He cut himself off with a self-imposed snarl, and when his jaw stretched he almost tore open the already-ragged skin of his mouth once more.

“It’s a mockery… they kill us by our very means of creation, the means that they both envy and condemn.”

Windblade watched him grip the components still bolted into his chest; the framework for the hydraulics, the pumps themselves, the cage that turned his spark into something deadly, something to be laughed at. It sounded so serious, so important to him. And yet...

“I don’t understand…”

“Spark bonds, Windblade.” He actually sounded disappointed, like he was trying to educate someone fresh from a hotspot, as his hands went limp. “Surely you know the impact of such things. Why they happen. What they lead to.”

She took a moment to think, to genuinely try and figure it out for herself. The bond… meant two sparks coming together. The concept alone was enough to almost scramble her circuits, but she tried to go with it. So if something could be ‘born’ from such a bond… what would it be? 

It had been a long night. She could practically smell her boards starting to fry.

“I don’t… I’m sorry, I don’t know what you’re talking about.” She wished she did, not only to avoid the roll of optics and heavy sigh of her companion. But neither of those happened. Starscream didn’t look disappointed anymore.

“I see… Caminus must be a very lonely place, then,” he said. 

“Why do you say that?” With how many people were in the colony, it was impossible to ever be alone. Cityspeakers had their bodyguards, dancers had their partners, singers had their audiences, even the Mistress had the Torchbearers and other dedicated disciples. Solitude was a myth, unless you made great effort to create it for yourself. Windblade had never known if she loved or hated the place for its complete lack of privacy, compensating so much for its own isolation on the cosmic scale. Starscream had admitted he’d heard of the colony, so he must have known what the culture was. Though, if he’d been imprisoned when Rattrap assumed power… where the universe was concerned, five centuries was not long at all- Windblade herself had been born only three centuries ago. But it was long enough for places to change. Caminus may have been a different world, when she’d not been around to see it. Cybertron had certainly been different.

“No children,” Starscream clarified, as if that was supposed to mean anything. “No lovers. You don’t use your sparks at all?”

“What are you supposed to ‘use’ them for?” Windblade meant the question with all the sincerity she could spare, wanting a serious answer to give her  _ some  _ idea of what Cybertronians had been doing with themselves (and each other) since Caminus had left them behind. It was like being told that she’d been using her wings completely wrong all this time, and then being expected to figure out the right way all by herself. 

Starscream narrowed his optics, and their glow was a little brighter as if his own spark was making fun of her. “What  _ is _ a spark to you, Windblade?” 

Though, if she wasn’t mistaken, his own question sounded as sincere as hers. Probably just to set her up for more embarrassment. Even so, she answered the only way she knew how to.

“They’re gifts from Primus, to be protected and shielded at all costs. Touching one… even showing one to someone else is unthinkable.” She said this to try and empathise with him, to prove that the process of execution via the spark was just as disgusting to her as it was to him, even if the deeper meanings for Cybertronians were still lost on her.

“And who told you all of that?” he asked.

“The Mistress of Flame. She’s our Cityspeaker. A messenger of Caminus’ will, and of Primus.” Then she realised that he already knew who she was. He’d been listening at the trial, after all. He’d heard what she’d said about the state of Cybertron as it now was. And, with what she knew now about her ‘hosts’, Windblade realised that the Mistress had been right all along. If they’d listened to her, they’d be on their way back home by now. 

But she’d know something was wrong. Windblade hadn’t reported to her since the previous cycle, and there was no way for Rattrap to fake a message that would ease her suspicion. She’d send another team, soldiers and bodyguards, maybe even the Torchbearers themselves, to see what had happened to her delegation. She wouldn’t let Rattrap get away with it. She’d come to rescue Windblade, and everyone else. They just had to survive until then. Whenever ‘then’ was...

But her wistful, desperate hopes were interrupted. It sounded like Starscream was choking again, his vents grinding as they opened and closed, his frame shaking even as his legs stayed still and heavy. Then he inhaled sharply, and Windblade realised he was laughing.

“From what I saw of your trial, I’d assumed you had some sense in your processor. But you’re really just a foolish, foolish femme...” Starscream laughed with his mouth clamped shut, as if to try and stifle the shrieking of gears and pistons around his frame, and Windblade felt her own twist as her spark- already the victim of enough punishment for one evening- flared in her chest.

“Don’t call me  _ foolish _ for not knowing things no-one will even tell me about,” she snapped, her patience wearing as thin as a wafer of semiconductor. They were supposed to be helping each other, the sole survivors of whatever evil experiment Rattrap had been running for the last five hundred years, yet he could do nothing but belittle and mock her. Which was bitterly ironic, considering his main complaint about his ‘operation’. And she didn’t think being locked up was much of an excuse for being so  _ rude _ .

Starscream stared at her, no longer laughing. But his wings hadn’t moved.

“A fair point,” he admitted. “So you’re not foolish after all. Then why, pray tell, would you put all your faith into someone who claims to talk to Primus of all people?”

Windblade opened her mouth without having anything to say. The Mistress was Primus’ chosen, and had been such ever since Caminus had lived on Cybertron’s surface. She’d predicted the ancient Quintesson invasion, after all, because Primus had warned her about it. That was why Caminus, and the Torchbearers, and everyone else who heeded her warning, had left. She didn’t  _ claim  _ to talk to Primus. She simply  _ did _ . 

But then… why hadn’t Primus warned her about what else would happen on Cybertron? Not just that her delegation would be captured and framed for crimes they never committed, but that his body would be taken over by mutations of his descendants. The technorganics had claimed that Primus had been on their side all along, which was why the Well of All Sparks lay dead at the planet’s core. Did they believe that Primus  _ wanted  _ his people exterminated because they were ‘obsolete’, that they were just doing as he wished? 

Maybe it was worse than that. Maybe Primus had died long ago, and the Well had died with him, and the technorganics were simply in denial. But the Mistress would have been distraught over such a thing. She would have known immediately if her connection to Primus, a connection stronger than any Cybertronian "spark bond", had been suddenly severed or left unattended. She would have told the colony, assembled a force to storm Cybertron and find out for herself what had happened to their God. She wouldn’t have waited this long. She wouldn’t have tried to hide it, if she even could.

Unless…

…

...

Windblade almost slapped herself, actually raising her hand to do it before grabbing her wrist. She’d almost thought something very dangerous, something that simply couldn’t be true. After all the lies and deception she’d already endured, that was one possibility she simply couldn’t even consider. Never.  _ Never.  _ She wanted to scold Starscream for even suggesting it. But that would only bolster his argument, make himself look even more smug.

“I thought  _ I _ was the one asking questions,” she pointed out, knowing it was a weak diversion even as she clung to it. But it seemed to suit him well enough as his mouth cracked open, the scars forming the faintest smile.

“That you were. Go on, then.”

Windblade inhaled, pulling the stale air in deep to her frame even as it chilled her. Their shelter did nothing to keep the weather out, but she didn’t mind it much. It kept her awake, and alert. They were still fugitives, and this peace was only temporary. If it could even be called peace for either of them.

“So…” She combed her processor for other questions, but there weren’t many that she didn’t think would make him laugh at her again. One stood out, though. One about him.

“The ‘Sparkcracking’ is symbolic,” she stated, mostly for herself. “Rattrap uses it to kill Cybertronians who get in his way. And you’re the only one who can… do it.”

Starscream grunted to save himself the effort of nodding, and Windblade hated that she felt relieved. That there was really only one machine on Cybertron like him, and that her friends would at least be spared what she almost went through.

“So why you? Why did they turn  _ you  _ into… something so horrible?” If he had been the only one to receive treatment like this, there had to be some reason for it. There had to be a reason that it was  _ him  _ and not someone else. If there was, only he would know it. But would he even tell her? 

Starscream’s jaw was set tight, the solder seams on his chin like the thick cords of his neck. It wasn’t immediately obvious if he would speak, or if he would just fall forward and let the ground meet him. His mouth eventually did open, but it was a while before anything came out.

“I was important once,” he told her, and each word was calculated and proofed and double-proofed before it was allowed out. “They got to me last. I can only assume… they wanted to use the last survivor of the old powers as a message. I’m a… I  _ was  _ a secret. But Cybertronians notice when people disappear. The technorganic descendants sleep soundly, not able to even imagine that something like me can exist, and the few surviving mechanicals spread rumors of what will happen if they fight back.”

So that was the truth of Cybertron. Their chancellor was a dictator in disguise. He’d allowed the Camiens within his circle, and then used them as tools to further his agenda. 

Metroplex had seen it happen from the very beginning. His warning had arrived too late. But it hadn’t been about him. It hadn’t been about mending the rift between colony and home.

The Camiens, Windblade and her friends, were nothing but fuel for Rattrap’s genocide. 

And she wanted to scream. She wanted to tear this already-destroyed building down, to blaze her way through every guard covered in fur and scales and leather and teeth, to rip every one of Rattrap’s heads from his shoulders. She wanted to scream. She wanted to cry. She wanted to go home. She wanted to scream.

And she hadn’t even been his main victim. If she was feeling incandescent with her fury, murderous and vicious, needing to put Rattrap through all the suffering he himself had ordered over the five centuries… what about Starscream? How was he sitting there, so calm in his composure? It couldn’t have just been exhaustion leaving him empty. He couldn’t have been worn down, if he’d managed to pull himself this far away from his prison. He couldn’t have  _ accepted  _ what Rattrap had done to him, if he’d been so incensed at the suggestion that it was his own fault. It was right there in his optics, in his weaponised spark. 

He wasn’t done yet. Not for a long while. The fire was still there in him, just laying dormant as he recovered. 

It then occurred to Windblade that she hadn’t even thanked him for rescuing her. He probably wouldn’t have accepted it, and it felt too late to say it now. But she still wanted to say  _ something _ , some small token of appreciation for what he’d done, of understanding for what he’d had to do.

“I’m sorry this happened to you, Starscream.” 

He let out some sort of whistle, like his vents were clogged and rasping. “I suppose you are.”

“What is that supposed to mean?” Windblade had expected some weary hostility in response, but she really didn’t know what to make of his state of mind from those few wheezed words.

“It _ means, _ ” he growled with closed optics, “that I don’t need your sympathy. Or pity.”

“I wasn’t…” Windblade felt her glossa fail her, because she knew denying it would just turn it into a lie. Then she tucked her glossa into the bottom of her mouth, like a stone weighing down her jaw. “Well, I don’t need yours either.”

“Glad to see we’re on the same page.”

Windblade had almost been ready to just leave him there to get over himself, to give him some silence so they could both calm down and consider what the Pit they were going to do next, but she could  _ hear  _ the smug smile on his mouth when he had absolutely nothing to be smiling about, and she felt a familiar fire being fed in her spark, the same one that had fueled her righteous outburst at the trial. Despite the abuse and the trauma and the energon it had lost, her frame was conducting enough heat that the cold surrounding it was turning to steam that came off of her in wispy clouds.

“If you’re just going to sit there and treat me like slag,” she snapped, staring at her ‘savior’ through those clouds, “then why even bother saving me in the first place?”

Starscream eased open one optic at her, and then rolled his shoulders in a heavy and painful shrug. “Because you freed me first. And I owed you for that.” He looked away then, to whatever point in the building’s shadows kept catching his attention. 

“So that’s it? You just don’t like being in people’s debt?” Even as Windblade said it, she knew that couldn’t possibly be all there was to it despite how Starscream nodded.

“There you go.” Then he closed his optics once more, and it was like he was a statue all over again. With how frustrating and antagonistic he insisted on being... maybe he was just tired. Well, after all that had happened, of course he was. Windblade wanted to just lie back and fall into recharge herself, though her anxiety was far higher than her exhaustion could ever catch up to. If she fell asleep here, she’d wake up to soldiers dragging her back out into the snow and throwing her into another cell to await some other cruel and unusual execution. And if they found Starscream too, would they take him back and chain him down in the middle of that room again? Would they dismantle him, or do something worse?  _ Was  _ there anything worse than being turned into a spark destroyer?

If Windblade wasn’t careful, if they didn’t find somewhere safe soon, she was sure she would find out for herself.

“This whole planet will be looking for us, won’t they?” she asked, barely a whisper. “If they don’t think we’re dead.” When there was no answer, she assumed that Starscream  _ was  _ asleep after all. But he inhaled deeply, and, shockingly, actually told her something that gave her hope.

“Not the whole planet. Some old Cybertronians still live. Some are brave. Most are stupid. I only meet those who are both.”

“People who aren’t technorganic?” Windblade thought back to Ironhide, one of Rattrap’s four guards, the only one she’d seen that didn’t look like the others. Of course there had to be others like him, like herself, hiding far out of sight where they couldn’t be hurt. “You think they’d help us?”

“If they’re brave, and stupid, and somehow still alive despite that.”

“We need to find them, then,” Windblade declared, fighting back a twitch on her lips that so desperately wanted to be a smile. “Them and my friends Velocity and Hot Shot, and the others still locked up-”

“I told you,” Starscream cut in with a growl. “It’s useless. You only escaped because of me. And because of that, they’ll increase security tenfold. Your other friends will be dead soon eno-”

“Don’t say that! You don’t know them!” Windblade found herself standing up, though she didn’t remember moving her legs, and her head started swimming from the sudden change in posture. But before she could sit back down or collapse, Starscream rearranged himself so that he was standing too. And even with his spinal strut bent, his wings nothing more than dead weight pressing down on his shoulders, he still towered over her.

“But I know you,” he told her, as if that was answer enough on its own. “You’re the first Camien I’ve encountered, and you’ll likely be the last.”

“Stop it!” Windblade gritted her denta as she held her head in her hands, keeping them occupied so she didn’t try to grab him and break something off by shaking him. “Things are bad enough as it is, there’s no need for you to make it worse for the both of us!”

And he laughed at her, though it was no feeble chuckle or choking on his own air this time. It was a sound that steamrolled through anyone’s audials, that announced to anyone in the same district that there was someone here of unrivalled strength and humor. This was a snapshot of Starscream in his prime- before the sparkcracking, before Rattrap ruined him- and though Windblade was the target of his jeering she could do nothing but watch in awe as his insides rattled, his entire infrastructure shaking like it would fall apart at the slightest breeze, yet still he continued to laugh like it was more important to him in that moment than being alive.

“That’s what you call it? ‘Making it worse’? ” he asked her through stray gasps, the strength of which almost flew him face-forward onto the ground as his spine jerked back and forth. “I call it the  _ truth _ , Windblade of Caminus. I call it what it is...” His heavy intakes were now nothing like laughter, as he gripped his chest plates like they were all that were keeping him standing upright.

“What I’ve  _ seen _ ...” Then, with his claws wedged deep into the razor-edged cracks and seams, he started tearing the plates apart- the hydraulics, the fluid lines, the bolts and screws and circuitry that made him into Rattrap’s pet monster, all clattering to his peds even as his digits were torn apart.

“Starscream, stop it-!” Windblade stepped forward to try and restrain him, knowing he was gutting and bleeding himself dry in his fury, but he stumbled back and listed to his side like he was about to fall off the landing, or at least was threatening to if she tried to touch him. 

“Being forced to spend the last five hundred years  _ executing  _ my own kind,” he hissed through the pain and energon, through Windblade’s own shock, “perpetrating our own  _ extinction _ -!” And then he tore out a vital fuel line, or the trauma of the night or the years had finally caught up to him, as he keeled over onto his knees from the force of the energon flood coming out of his mouth. With how dark the desolate building was, his fuel was bright like splattered blue lava and it burned Windblade’s optics to look at it too long. Yet she couldn’t look away.

“Starscream…?” She was by his side, not caring if his purged energon stained her protoform or jammed her digits together. She tried to hold his wings back, mindful to not touch them in the delicate areas, though even when her digits grazed the central joint he didn’t even twitch. He was limp like a toy, helpless as his fuel tanks emptied themselves all over the floor, and only Windblade’s grip on his wings stopped him from collapsing. 

_ ‘He’s actually dying,’  _ she thought, even though it couldn’t be true. _ ‘Oh no. Oh no…’ _

She couldn’t fix this. She wouldn’t even know where to start- Primus, why couldn’t Velocity be with her, or Chromia to smack some sense into her, or even Lightbright to keep her going out of spite...

And then, as if it couldn’t get any worse, a voice called out from downstairs.

“Whoever’s in here, would it  _ pain _ you to keep it down?!” an unfamiliar mech bellowed. “My patients are suffering enough as it is!”

Starscream pulled himself away from Windblade’s grip with the last of his strength, his mouth and ravaged chest covered in energon, and she saw him shake his helm as he pulled away from the edge of the mezzanine. But she couldn’t tell what he was trying to tell her- stay quiet? Or just make the newcomer go away? If it was a technorganic, they’d surely summon guards. But if it was a Cybertronian, there was a chance they’d offer help.

Either way… Starscream wasn’t going to live for much longer. And Windblade wouldn’t last long without him. 

“Sorry… sir.” Windblade struggled to raise her voice as she tried to stand up, shakily making her way to the top of the stairs before the mech thought to start climbing them. “We were… I was just about to-” She cut herself off when she saw who was waiting on the ground floor…

A Cybertronian. At least, she didn’t see any signs of mutation. No fur or claws. No wings, either. The only other things she could really see were that he was red, he had wheels on his back, and he had his hands on his hips like he was expecting a grovelling apology. From the bright red light of his optics- very different to Starscream’s own despite the same color- she saw him tilt his helm to one side. 

“Ma’am, are you aware you’re lacking armor plates?” He pointed a long talon at her as if she really  _ didn’t  _ know she was down to her protoform. 

“Yes,” she sighed, ever so slightly frustrated despite the dying mech lying in the shadows behind her. “Very aware.”

“Well... you look familiar,” the mech said. “Have we met before?”

Windblade felt a lump in her vocaliser, seriously suspecting that it was her spark trying to flee her body once and for all. The trial had been broadcast over the whole planet, hadn’t it? Everyone, technorganic or not, thought she was a terrorist, and her own Cityspeaker marks made it impossible for her to hide. Her face was in shadow, and the distance between the two floors helped blur her details, but she was sure that she would eventually be recognised, and even more sure that anyone who took her into custody would be generously rewarded...

“No, no, definitely not,” she assured, walking backwards into the safe darkness of the second floor before turning to flee. “Sorry again, I’ll be on my way just now-”

“Hold on a nanoklick, your back-” Before Windblade could even turn back towards the stairs, the mech had reached the top in a matter of nanoklicks and was gripping her shoulders like they were handlebars. She froze with a yelp, though her wings were fluttering from her cable spasms as the mech ran his hands over the plates. Even though he was careful to avoid the sensitive areas (or just lucky), there was still something  _ horribly  _ invading about a stranger’s hands on her frame, especially after her spark had been bared naked just a few breems ago. 

“My goodness,” the mech tutted even as Windblade tried to get away from him, “it’s a miracle you can even stand with your strut in that state. And your wings are almost completely bent! And you’ve lost all that energon?! How long have you had this for!?” 

Then Windblade realised that he was the answer to her silent prayers. He had patients, he knew something was wrong, and he assumed the massive puddle of energon on the floor had come from her- he was a  _ medic _ .

When he finally released her, she whirled around to face him with careful hope, and even more careful glances around the floor for Starscream. But he was nowhere in sight, not even with his telltale energon leaks. 

“Um…” Windblade stalled in her answer to try and look around the second floor for him. “It’s only been for a few breems, but-” He grabbed her again before she could finish, pulling her down the stairs with such speed that her peds would have left skid marks on the ground.

“You’ll need them fixed ASAP if you don’t want the damage to be permanent,” he told her like it was a lecture. “Luckily my skills are more than up to the task, but I do charge extra for priority work so you better have good credit or I’ll bend those wings back out of shape myself.”

Windblade looked over her shoulder for any other sign of Starscream, seeing only a long trail of energon leading from over the edge of the mezzanine to the ground floor but then her attention was back on the medic when he brought up the one thing she hadn’t considered, the one thing to bring all her hope crashing back down to rock bottom.

“I… don’t have any credits,” she told him. And then he instantly released her, looking over her like he was expecting her to be infectious of something.

“Oh. Well then. Should have known, if you can’t even afford armor... I better get back to work. Good luck to you!” He waved a lazy farewell with his back turned, but before Windblade could chase him down and plead for his help, any help, even just a placebo or roof that wasn’t about to fall down…

There was that laugh again. Not nearly as rich as the one that came before, a mere shadow of itself, but it was still a sound that was unmistakably Starscream. And it was coming from under the mezzanine, where the energon trail kept dripping away from above.

“Over five centuries, Knockout,” Starscream called out with a cough, “and you haven’t changed one bit.”

He must have somehow lowered himself to the ground and then rolled away into the darkness. Windblade went to approach his hiding spot, but then the medic pushed right past her like he had a score to settle.

“And just who are you to be acting snide over how I run  _ my _ practice? Are you the same slagger leaving me bad reviews on the-?” There was a bright shine as the medic switched his headlights on, and as he adjusted to the sudden glare he leapt backwards in fright. There he was, lying on the floor amidst a mild wreckage of crumpled steel and his own gore. The energon was blinding underneath his hand, where he’d tried to stop it from bleeding out. No wonder a doctor would be so appalled at the sight. But when Windblade reached the medic’s side, he inched closer like he wasn’t quite sure if he was even looking at a person. And then he whispered like he was trying to talk to a ghost.

“Starscream…?”

“Good to see you too.” Starscream spluttered, and his mouth was clearly outlined by the spread of energon drops. 

“I… where…? I thought you were…”

“I only look dead, Knockout. Though I probably will be in the next breem if I don’t…” His vocaliser suddenly failed, stretching out the words into indecipherable sounds. And that was enough to spur Knockout into action. He kept his headlights on, clearing space around Starscream’s body so he could see the full extent of the damage. Windblade helped in silence, not knowing what to do or even think. It was either pure coincidence that this medic was someone Starscream had once known, or Primus was working overtime to try and make her faithful again. 

Either way, Windblade allowed herself to feel… calm. Not quite safe, not yet. But she could take just one moment to rest as Knockout carried out his examination. He hissed, and tutted, and cursed in whispers, but he didn’t shake his helm. That meant it wasn’t hopeless. That meant he could still help.

“She with you as well?” he muttered, and Starscream could only let out a vague groan that caught in his dead vocaliser like a fibre jam in a weaving machine. 

“Right.” Knockout stood up, pulling Starscream’s nearest arm over his shoulder. “Take his other servo,” he told Windblade. “We’ll get him through the side entrance.” 

And Windblade did as ordered, even though he felt like he weighed as much as one of Metroplex’s districts, even though he was still bleeding all over her. Because, even if Starscream felt like his debt was paid, Windblade still felt like she owed him. And she still had questions that couldn’t be answered by a dead mech.


	5. Chapter 5

“Can we go out yet?”

Velocity hissed air out through her intakes, as close to a sigh as she dared. “No, Hot Shot.” 

It was the fourth time he’d asked that same question, in that same hushed whine like he was being told he couldn’t stay out on the streets all night. But really, he was being told to shut up before he got them both killed.

“But my tanks are starving…” As if on cue, his fuel lines seemed to gurgle in protest of running empty like they always did if he went a few klicks without stuffing his face. Though, maybe the dark was just making everything sound louder. Either way, it didn’t inspire much sympathy from Velocity. 

“We’ve only been in here a few breems,” she reminded him in a harsh whisper, even though just one klick spent with him complaining felt like an hour all on its own. “You’ll last another few cycles if you need to.”

“A few CYCLES?!” 

“Quiet!” Velocity lunged forward to clamp her hands over Hot Shot’s jaw, just as he realised his outburst and tried to correct it with his own hands covering his mouth. Even with the total darkness of the cabinet, it was easy to pinpoint his location when he insisted on being so damn  _ loud _ . If anyone else was listening outside, if anyone could hear them hiding inside… 

They’d both seen what happened to Maxima. Velocity had taken her back to the  _ Hermitian  _ with Hot Shot, under the pretense of finding something useful from the ship’s medbay, and they hadn’t been onboard for more than five klicks before there was a voice ordering them to come out. Velocity could see the guards assembled outside from the ship’s viewport, the weapons they had ready, yet Maxima told her and Hot Shot to stay put. She’d gone out by herself to see what the problem was, and they ambushed her like she was some kind of violent criminal. It took every single bot gathered there to subdue her, and while she was pinned down with cuffs digging into her wrists she’d met Velocity’s optics through the ship’s front window. She didn’t say anything, nothing that the medic could hear at least, but the warning was obvious enough without words. They’d be boarding the ship next. They’d be coming for her, and Hot Shot, and likely everyone else.

She had to hide, to keep them both safe. But there was nowhere they wouldn’t be found, nowhere the guards wouldn’t check...

Nowhere, except Nautica’s prototype subspace cabinet, the one she’d been so proud of, that Velocity had had nightmares about getting lost in. But what waited for her outside would be far worse than any nightmare. She didn’t know why Maxima had been detained, if the others were being arrested as well, if they’d all been tricked or if it was just an innocent misunderstanding. 

None of that mattered anyway. They had to hide, and that was what they did. Velocity flipped the hidden switch to open the compartment, and as the void appeared she pushed Hot Shot in before either of them could hesitate. As she threw herself inside, grabbing the edge of the door as she fell into the empty to pull it flush behind her, she almost didn’t notice the transition. The sensation of simply disappearing from existence; temporarily, only physically, but still utterly  _ gone  _ from her own reality. Nautica had tried to explain how the cabinet worked, with equations and diagrams and her own scale models she’d made out of scrap metal and warped plastics borrowed from various refinery dumpsters, but though her effort was admirable she had never quite understood the art of making things simple for people who weren’t as smart as her… which was pretty much everyone on Caminus. Velocity was a competent chemist (almost mandatory in her line of work, after all) but any kind of physics just gave her chills. She didn’t like thinking about how big the universe really was outside of Caminus, how many different forces of that universe were constantly working against her no matter how much she tried to prepare for the worst, to have a solution for every and any possible problem…

So why did she fling herself into a physics experiment that hadn’t even been evaluated by the scientific guild, let alone approved? Why did she even agree to leave Caminus in the first place?

...Well, at the time she knew why. Because she wanted to be useful. Because she wanted to do something other than patch up drunk idiots and clumsy dancers every other night. Because a medic didn’t see much else in a place like Caminus. How stupid that she’d wished for some danger, some chance to challenge herself, and she’d gotten exactly what she wanted.

It wasn’t her fault, wasn’t  _ anyone _ ’s fault that she could think of… but it sure felt like Primus just wanted to torment her. 

“We can’t stay in here forever, Velocity.” Hot Shot mumbled like he was still holding a hand over his mouth, and Velocity wished she couldn’t hear him because she knew how right he was.

“We won’t have to,” she said, trying to convince herself as she did. “We just need to wait for Maxima.”

Maxima, who had been overwhelmed and outnumbered, who had made them both stay behind because she knew something bad was waiting outside, who was their only hope for knowing when it was safe to come out...

“You really think she’ll be coming back for us?” Hot Shot scoffed, and Velocity almost wanted to throttle him for being so realistic. “There were, like, five guards outside when you shoved us in here! And she was fragging hungover or sick or whatever was wrong with her!”

“No, she wasn’t,” she informed him. “She made that up so we could stay behind.” At first Velocity had been against lying to the Cybertronians and trying to trick them, but now she was grateful for Maxima’s paranoia. Ironic though, that she had known something was wrong yet hadn’t been able to save herself from it.

“What?! So I missed out on everything for  _ nothing _ ?!” Despite all the slag they’d found themselves in, Hot Shot was  _ still  _ hung up on not getting to go along with Lightbright and the others, even when they were all likely rotting in the same place Maxima was dragged away to! And then, before Velocity could let him know how much of an utter dumbaft he really was-

“GAH! I felt something! Something grabbed me, there’s  _ something else in here- _ !”

He went and proved it for himself with an outburst that would have been heard all the way back on Caminus. 

“Would you fragging  _ shut up,  _ Hot Shot?!” Velocity wanted to scream at him, since he’d already gone ahead and ruined their stealth, but she forced her anger into a tight hiss regardless. It sounded like a scream in the dark anyway- both cramped and infinite, neither of them able to get away from the other- and he actually  _ did _ shut up. Either Hot Shot had realised he’d surely been heard by whoever was still waiting outside, or Velocity’s frustration had shocked him into silence. 

A few anonymous klicks passed, each one leaving Velocity in anticipation of being dragged out into sudden blinding light, yet no-one came for them. She heard nothing, not even Hot Shot’s vents, and she almost wondered if something  _ had  _ snatched him away into the nothing. But then she heard him; a shaky intake, a mumble. 

“I’m scared, Lottie…”

Not just scared. Terrified. Velocity had heard the same voice from few patients, those who weren’t used to getting hurt, and now she was feeling the same. Yelling at Hot Shot wasn’t going to fix anything, of course. He shouldn’t be punished for not being able to hide how he was feeling. He knew Maxima, the one who had pledged to always protect him, wasn’t coming back, and he knew their friends were in danger, and there was nothing either of them could do about it. What else was he supposed to but panic?

“I’m scared too,” Velocity confessed, pulling her legs up to her chest though she couldn’t even see her frame. “Nautica could probably figure something out if she was here, but...” Pit, Nautica could have gotten them all back home with nothing but a screwdriver and some scrap metal. Why couldn’t  _ she _ have stayed behind with Maxima? She wasn’t a trained medic, but with how quickly she learned things she could have done all of Velocity’s studies in just a few days if she felt like it. She could have reconfigured the subspace cabinet so it opened out into her lab back on Caminus, or built a weapon to scare off the guards, or done  _ something  _ other than sit around waiting to be rescued...

“Frag it.” Velocity knew where the cabinet’s exit was despite the darkness (another thing Nautica had tried to explain, something about a compass always pointing the same way and a bot’s EM field being the same), and she watched the light from outside bleed in through the tiny opening of the door. It was like a hairline crack in the dark, illuminating none of it.

“Where are you going?!” Hot Shot sounded far away now that the cabinet’s space was breached. 

“You’re right,” Velocity told him, buying herself time to convince herself to move. “We can’t stay in here forever. And Maxima obviously isn’t coming back anytime soon. So I’m seeing what’s out there for myself. You stay here.” She probably didn’t need to tell him to do that, but her burst of courage might have been infectious. If she got caught, they needed at least one Camien free and on the run. The Mistress of Flame would realise something was wrong sooner or later, if she didn’t already know, so all Hot Shot would have to do is wait for her to arrive...

Only if Velocity got caught, though. She just had to be careful. They’d been hidden away for hours, so surely the guards were gone by now…? She couldn’t see any in the ship’s loading bay at least, even as she took a full klick to emerge from the cabinet. Hot Shot might have made some other protest, but he was cut off by the door sealing him back into the void. Now she truly  _ was  _ alone on the ship… it felt like trespassing. Between the Cybertronians finding her and Nautica finding something broken on her pride and joy, Velocity didn’t know which she should be more scared of. Even if she knew how to work any of the controls, there wasn’t much she could even do. The comm panel looked dead, and Velocity didn’t know how to turn it on, let alone use it to send any kind of message to the Mistress. Solus, why couldn’t Nautica have just jury-rigged one of the regular pagers medics used…?

So that left calling for help impossible. But Velocity could check outside at least, since the command pod’s viewport should still be open. And if there was no-one around, she could sneak out with Hot Shot and go… where? 

Somewhere. Anywhere. Maybe they could just walk back to Technotropolis and ambush the Chancellor. Assuming he wasn’t the one who had ordered them all captured. Though he probably was, cause who else on the planet would have that kind of authority? 

Dammit, if she just had some idea of what the Pit was going on, she could figure out what to do next. She went to the medbay just for a sense of security and belonging, finding everything in its usual place to ease her anxiety ever so slightly. Just as well she’d decided to overstock, though her subspace was still crammed full of all the extra supplies she’d taken along when they landed. The control pod was just ahead, though Velocity had to push herself towards it because if anyone else was onboard waiting for her, that was where they’d be waiting...

But the door hissed open, and the pod was completely deserted. No lights blinking, no hum of the engines. It was so dark that she almost thought she’d found another door back into the subspace cabinet, the open viewport showing a hangar draped in shadows. But it had been light outside when the guards had appeared… how long had she and Hot Shot really been hidden away for? 

She didn’t have much time to wonder before she noticed someone standing under the viewport, and she fell to the ground like her joints suddenly failed her. 

“Hoo! Ha! Come and try it, I’ll knock your circuits in!”

She heard a mech’s voice in between other sounds of exertion, though she didn’t see who the speaker was until she managed to raise her optics to the very bottom of the viewport. It was one of the odd Cybertronians; covered in thick armor plates, his head sporting a pair of curved horns, and his mouth was covered by frilled metal that made the strange sounds he was making echo slightly, whoops and growls as he kicked and punched at the empty air around him. 

“You want a piece of me, eh? How about two? Woo, just missed me!” 

At first Velocity thought she’d been spotted, with all her energon freezing at once, but the mech just stayed in place as he assaulted his invisible enemy. Then she realised, it was a familiar sight. Vertex often talked and acted out to practice her characters, blocking out everyone else around her as she said her lines and followed her directions until they were programmed into her mind. Was this mech an actor too? If so, why was he all alone in a spaceship hangar?

“Powerhug!”

No, not alone at all. Another mech’s voice called out, much deeper than the first, and Velocity saw Powerhug flinch as he scrambled to salute whoever was approaching.

“Gah! Er, yes, Tigatron!”

“You were slacking off again.” Tigatron towered over Powerhug, and Velocity recognised him as one of the mech’s who had greeted them with Rhinox and Airazor. White fur surrounded patches of his green protoform, and he seemed to have some kind of false face on his chest. With the height difference between them, this was the only face Powerhug could actually meet the eyes of. 

“Ye… no, sir, no, I was staying on guard in case any Camiens show up!” 

“Right. Why don’t you go to the aftend and have Sonar help you with that?”

“Is that a suggestion, or…?”

“It’s an order.”

“Right. Sure. Okay. Just making sure.” And then something happened that Velocity had yet to see- Powerhug  _ transformed _ , but not into a vehicle. His armor plates slid into place over him like a spiked shell, turning him into a ball, and he rolled away with a clicking sound that faded quickly. Tigatron watched him go with a shake of his head.

“Primus save us all…”

Velocity only caught small glimpses of the interaction, and she kept her head down away from the viewport when Tigatron was alone. He would surely spot her instantly… but he didn’t seem to expect anyone to be inside the ship. That was good. That was something  _ useful _ . For whatever reason, he and probably a few others were under orders to guard the ship and stop her friends from boarding. No sign of what they’d do to anyone they caught though, and Velocity wasn’t about to find out for herself. 

She’d seen enough for now. If she could get back to the cabinet, she could at least assure Hot Shot that no-one would be searching the ship for them. And she’d still have to put up with him whining about fuel. 

Though… it was very dark outside, but it hadn’t felt like much time had passed inside the cabinet. Maybe it hadn’t only been a few breems. She checked her chronometer, the only thing she could really trust anymore, and-

...Primus. They’d been in there for a whole solar cycle. The chronometer itself had been slowed down while inside, but now that she was out it quickly corrected itself to the proper time. It had been that long and the Cybertronians were still looking for them, for whatever reason. Had others managed to escape too? Or maybe they were safe, the misunderstanding completely resolved, and only Velocity and Hot Shot were unaccounted for.

But then, why hadn’t Maxima come back for them? No, she had to assume they were fugitives. And she had to keep them both safe. The subspace cabinet could do that. 

But if she was going to go back in there, she needed energon. She had some medical-grade in the medbay, but it wouldn’t last long without refrigeration and she didn’t think it was a good idea to drink what was supposed to go directly into the fuel lines… but what other option was there?

The engine. It would have some still resting in its tanks; raw-grade, spliced with other chemicals that tasted like cleaning solvent, but better than nothing. If they rationed it, they could stay under the radar for a long time. And it wouldn’t even feel that long.

Still crouching, Velocity crawled out of the control pod and towards the engine, mindful of every step she took and door she had to open. Now that she knew people were outside, she couldn’t assume that she was safe in the ship. Anything could give her away. But as long as she got the energon, she just had to run back to the cabinet. 

The tanks were close to the engine, but in a different room so the heat wouldn’t boil the liquid. This was the one part of the ship that Velocity could at least pretend to understand- the tanks had an emergency drainage valve in case of flammable incidents, so all she had to do was turn it and drip the fuel into a container. Simple. There was even a bucket nearby, like Primus was finally cutting her some slack. 

She found the valve with help from her headlights, but her digits froze over it. She had no idea if it would make a sound, if it was rusty or connected to the engines themselves, if the sound of dripping energon would sabotage her. So she had to be ready to run. She was good at that, at least. It was in her name, after all.

Velocity almost bit through her lip as she turned the valve, and there was a subtle hum from the tank as it released its reservoir. The energon was dull and lifeless in its glow, nothing like the medical-grade she kept in the ship’s freezers nor the delectable high-grade from home, but it would keep even a dead bot going for a little longer. And with how Hot Shot guzzled his fuel, she doubted he’d even notice the taste before it was gone. 

It was going well. It was actually going  _ well _ , she was  _ doing _ something! But then the valve stopped, with the bucket not even half-full. 

_ ‘I thought you were a bucket half-empty person?’  _ she heard Nautica quip in her audio, and she almost whirled around to knock her across the shoulder when she remembered that she was alone. It had only a day, and she was already going crazy. Great. If only she’d studied processor health instead of frames, she could have diagnosed herself. Or maybe psychoanalyse her way to victory. 

No, scratch that. She should have been an engineer. A bot’s frame wasn’t all that different from a machine anyway. Same parts, different names. And a machine was easier to keep going than a bot. It didn’t care if the fuel tasted good, where it came from or how much there was. It just worked if you let it. 

She should have just been a machine. If she didn’t have energon, she would just stop working. She wouldn’t die so slowly, each system shutting down to conserve power, first her onboard sensors and then her servos, her optics and vocaliser, everything except her processor and spark gone and by then her fuel pump would be circulating nothing and it would be late to save either of them... she’d seen it happen, heard about putting bots into stasis when they had no fuel left to spare, heard stories about them never waking up even when their tanks were fuel, even when nothing was wrong anymore-

Then she slapped herself.

‘ _ Stop it, Lottie. Stop it.’  _ She was falling into the trap that Hot Shot had barely been avoiding. If she accepted that all was lost, then all  _ would  _ be lost. She wouldn’t die. Pit, it was her job to make sure it didn’t happen! If there was one thing she was qualified for, it was surely that.

So what did she need to do? There was definitely more energon in the tank, there  _ had  _ to be if Nautica had been planning to fly back to Caminus. It just wasn’t coming out. Was there a blockage? She tried jabbing a digit through the valve’s pipe, and through a grimace she felt something push back. Another problem with raw-energon; if it sat stagnant for too long, the byproducts could curdle together into mush. Usually the turbines in the tank stopped that from happening but, of course, they weren’t running. 

The blockage wasn’t one that she could just poke through, since her digit wasn’t thin enough to fit through the whole pipe, so she had to pull it out somehow…

Velocity remembered something then, like how Vertex and Nautica had both popped into her mind. A patient had come in with fuel poisoning, after he went through with a dare to ingest a whole batch of spoiled energon. She’d had to hook up a vacuum to his fuel lines to pull all of the rancid energon out before it clogged his pump. Did she have a vacuum on hand? No, of course not… but she did see a thin tube, a small part of something meant to siphon the tank’s contents far away from the ship itself. 

There was nothing else for it. She needed the energon, and she needed to clear the way. So she hooked one end of the tube onto the valve and brought the other to her mouth, allowing herself a shudder before taking in a deep breath through it. 

Nothing happened. So she tried again with an even deeper intake, forcing her fans into overdrive. And again, and again, until-

_ Pop! _

The lump of curdled energon flew down the tube, along with a renewed stream of raw fuel. Velocity felt her face burn in pride when she saw it… but she didn’t get the tube away from her mouth in time. She felt the congealed mass hit her face, even as she clamped her lips down, and as the valve released the rest of the fuel into the bucket she couldn’t stop herself spluttering and gagging as she tried to scrape her glossa clean with her denta. She hadn’t felt it go in her mouth, but Primus she could still  _ taste  _ it, like refinery runoff or factory slag forced right under her olfactories.

“Hot Shot,” she hissed, “if you say one bad thing about this energon I swear to fragging Solus-”

“I heard something!”

No, no no no no, they’d heard her coughing up her spark. One bot had heard, at least, someone she couldn’t recognise from his voice.

“Where?” But that was definitely Tigatron answering; she almost felt the walls around her shake from the depth of his vocaliser. 

“From the ship! I swear, I heard something moving around in there! Open it up, lemme see who’s hiding-!” Velocity was trying to squeeze the last of the vital energon out as she froze, hearing a bang against the ship’s hull. Only one, though. 

“Calm down, Stampy,” she heard Tigatron scold as she hefted the mostly-full bucket into her arms. “You know our orders. Terrorsaur still needs to examine the ship’s mechanisms before anyone can board.”

Velocity had to perform a balancing act between speed and strength, all the while expecting to hear the ship being raided and the walls torn down around her. 

“We don’t need to wait for  _ him _ to stick his beak into the controls,” Stampy protested with a stubborn groan, “just lemme kick down the door-!”

“ _No._ ” Tigatron growled this time to make his order clear, and Velocity would have ran out and kissed him if she could have. She was so close to the cabinet, only needing to find the control to open it. Nautica had made it inconspicuous, hidden somewhere under the console instead of on it, specifically so no-one could just stumble upon her new toy, but it was hard to get to it with your servos occupied…

Just as Velocity’s digit grazed the button and part of the ship’s wall eased itself aside, she heard Tigatron speak again. 

“But if you do suspect that someone is inside… Sonar.”

“Understood,” a femme said. “Cover your audios.”

Velocity didn’t know what she was about to do, and absolutely did not want to know. She didn’t wait to hear from Hot Shot inside before she shoved the energon in, and then herself. The darkness fell upon her once more, the energon’s feeble glow barely visible, and she hadn’t been within it for a nanoklick before the most awful sound she’d ever heard suddenly ripped through everything. 

‘ _ Primus, she wasn’t kidding about that warning…!’  _ Velocity kept the energon bucket clamped by her legs as she tried to shield her audios from the screech, and even after it faded into grateful silence she didn’t want to take her hands away. The aftereffect, ringing and wrecked audio levels all over her processor, made it so that she almost didn’t hear Hot Shot even when he was right next to her.

“What the Pit was  _ that _ ?!” He had to repeat himself, and the second time he still sounded muffled like he was talking through a layer of rock. 

“Some kind of… locating system,” Velocity guessed. “Or alarm, maybe. Here.” She handed off the energon to him, ready to clamp her audios down again for when he started complaining about it. But he didn’t say anything as he took the bucket. In fact, though he was definitely low on fuel, he didn’t even take any of it. 

“Are you okay?” he asked, and Velocity had to wonder if she was. The obvious answer was definitely not, because Hot Shot was definitely not fine either. But she didn’t want to state the obvious. The truth was bad enough without her going the extra mile to point it out. 

“Yeah. Good.” She was still free, at least. That  _ was  _ good. 

“Are they coming for us?” 

“No. No, I don’t think so.” Velocity took a breath, parsing what she’d heard during her frantic run back to safety. “They said... they’re not allowed to board yet. They have to wait for authorization. Probably one of Rattrap’s mechanics who’s supposed to disable the systems.” She decided against telling him about how long they’d actually been stuck in the cabinet, at least for now. It was one thing he was probably better off not knowing, for his own good.

“And when they get onboard… what then?” Hot Shot gulped as he asked, though he still hadn’t taken any energon down his throat.

“They’ll search it,” she figured. “And they’ll find us. Or not.” In the end, it was as simple as that. If they were found, they’d be reunited with the others and they’d finally find out why they were suddenly wanted criminals. If they went unnoticed, they’d just have to stay put until they  _ were  _ found.

Or died.

No, no. Stop that.

“Velocity?” 

For the very first time, she was actually grateful to hear Hot Shot.

“Yeah?”

“Are your headlights working?”

Of course they were, she’d been using them just a few klicks ago. And, of course, she hadn’t realised she could have been using them in here the whole time. Her frame would need more fuel than usual to keep the lights going, but that wouldn’t be a problem. Not for now, so long as she could get used to the taste of pure liquid alkaline. 

“Yeah… yeah, I can keep them on for a little while.” She flipped the internal switch, and immediately her lights shone onto Hot Shot. Once her optics adjusted to her own glare, she saw him sitting on a floor that didn’t exist, his Cityspeaker markings almost completely worn away like he’d been rubbing his optics in the dark.

“Thanks,” he said, smiling with a thin residue over his top lip. And, funnily enough, the siphoned energon didn’t taste as bad now that it was shared.


	6. Chapter 6

Windblade said nothing as she helped carry Starscream out of the building’s carcass, down a snow-strewn alley into another place that didn’t look like it was in much better condition. It had all four walls, at least, and some kind of roof. She wasn’t given time to take in much else before Knockout disappeared behind plastic sheets that covered a dark doorway. 

“Emergency patient,” he told someone in a rushed mumble. “Close up the front, I won’t be fixing anyone else today. Yes, it’s bad… you don’t want to know.” And then he stormed back through with a loud  _ thud _ of the door itself slamming behind him. 

“Get him up on the slab,” he told Windblade with a nod, indicating the wide table in the middle of the room. She realised that it was a rudimentary surgical slab, and that this must be his operating theatre. From just a glance at the grime on the standing walls and rust on the floor, she felt like she was more likely to catch an infection than have one cured in this place…

But they had no other place to go. So she steadied Starscream against the table, helping him lift one of his legs up onto it while pushing on the rest of him so he was laid flat on the slab. Now he couldn’t even keep his optics open, his mouth dribbling curdled energon, and when a spotlight snapped on overhead she saw the full extent of the damage to his chest. He’d torn open a hole with his claws, and it gaped through layers of protoform, circuitry and mesh right down to his endoskeleton. Rattrap had bolted his modifications right down to his bones, and Starscream had tried to skin himself just to rip them out. 

It was worse than anything Windblade had seen before, worse than Velocity’s most gruesome horror stories from dancers with snapped legs, singers with rust in their vocalisers from trying to pour oil down their throats, artists with so much heavy metal coating from their paints that they could hardly move their digits. She felt like she wanted to purge, but there was almost nothing in her tanks to throw up.

“Are you squeamish?” Knockout was like a red spectre around the hum and glow of the light shining from above, and for a moment Windblade thought he was making fun of her. But he had one hand braced on the table, the other taking the form of a buzzsaw, ready to cut into Starscream at any moment.

“Um…” Windblade gulped, fighting the urge to step back. “I don’t think so-” Knockout didn’t wait for further confirmation before he activated the saw, and its high-pitched whirr was almost pleasant compared to the sound of it crunching through Starscream’s chest plating. There was some resistance against the hydraulics, the thick steel protesting being shorn apart, but Knockout just used his own weight down on the slab to force the saw through. He worked quickly, methodically, not stopping once to clean the energon from himself or to even check if Starscream was still alive. Windblade thought he was… hoped he was. She had never seen a dead mech before. Pit, she’d never even see a  _ dying _ one. She didn’t know what one was supposed to look like.

He made small sounds, at least. Groans when Knockout yanked the plates apart to get to the underlying protoform, checking for any excess damage; hisses from his vents when a blowtorch was taken to his wound to cauterize it- though, they might have just been reflex sound effects from an empty shell. Regardless, Knockout made a grand show of looking like he knew what he was doing. 

“Hand me that syringe,” he barked while pointing a servo to a table at his left. “Quickly, quickly!” Windblade found the giant needle he must have been referring to and immediately had it snatched from her grip, as Knockout positioned the sharp end within one of the gaps left by the sawn-off hydraulics. Then he yanked on the plunger, pulling it back like a ripcord as the syringe filled with a translucent fluid- definitely not energon, whatever it was. He disposed of the fluid in a sink behind him, and did the whole process over another three times. Windblade kept her attention on Starscream, watching for any grimace or twitch, any sign that he was still online. He had to be… no medic would keep working on a corpse. Well, Velocity might, if she thought she could still save them if she tried hard enough. 

Primus, Windblade wished she was here...

“The hydraulic fluid was mixing in with his energon,” Knockout said over the hiss of a hose cleaning off his hands in the sink. “Poisoning his systems. It should be all gone now.”

Though he didn’t face her, Windblade had the feeling that he was saying it for her benefit. And it  _ was  _ a benefit, knowing that at least one thing had been fixed. She wanted to ask the medic what would come next (because surely the repairs wouldn’t be this simple); but before she could decide if she even wanted to know, Knockout went right back to work without a falter in his step. He opened the lid of a freezer unit, pulling out small packs of medical-grade energon and hooking them up all around Starscream’s prone frame.

“I don’t know what the Pit you’ve been doing with yourself all this time, Starscream,” Knockout muttered as he jabbed external lines through his patient’s protoform, “but you should not be alive right now. I say that because I’m both impressed and horrified that you still are.”

Starscream’s vents fell open, and his vocaliser was overtaken with an overload of coughs like he was trying to stop the fresh energon flowing into him from coming up out of his throat. Before Windblade could feel relief that he really was still alive (despite Knockout’s professional opinion), he scowled around a groan as he tried to sit up. 

“If you don’t  _ shut up _ ,” he snarled, “I’ll just go ahead and kill myself so I don’t have to look at the repair bill.” Then he tried to get off the table, as if he thought he could just walk off with six fuel lines all hanging out of him. But even if the lines didn’t tether him in place, Knockout was on hand to shove him back down flat where he was supposed to stay. 

“The energon infusion alone would bankrupt you,” the medic informed him, not seeing or maybe just not caring about Starscream’s hazy-yet-incredulous glare. “Even if you still had the vault of Vos to dip into.” 

And then Starscream went silent, turning his head as much as he could so he was facing an empty wall. Windblade remained where she was at his other side, taking in all the apparatus in the makeshift clinic, the glowing blue energon lines feeding life back into Starscream; and there, left forgotten on the floor, the thick bars of metal that Knockout had sliced through to free his patient’s chest from its prison. Windblade knelt down to them, picked one up with two hands. Just the one piece of jagged metal felt like it weighed a tonne, and with how much of it had been welded to Starscream’s frame it was a miracle that he could walk at all. Of course, it had to be strong to withstand the force of crushing a spark. Over, and over, and over again. This was what had almost killed her, just a few hours ago. This was what had almost driven her ancestors to extinction…

Her hands jolted away from the broken mechanisms, like they were electrified. She didn’t want to touch them anymore. She didn’t want to look at them. 

“Did you get all the pieces off of him?” she asked aloud to Knockout, turning her head far away from the pile of disassembled torture tools. “All the… modifications?”

“All the ones that were in my way. But I’ll have to wait until his energon is replenished before I can see what else is inside.” He sounded so nonchalant, like he was just talking about his ride to work or the sky outside. Windblade watched him hose down his surgical implements, mop up the spilled energon that pooled under Starscream before it dried to a crust, throw the broken steel parts down a disposal chute (though she looked away when he picked them up from the floor). Starscream still wasn’t saying anything, and she knew better than to try and talk to him while his frame was in the middle of repairs. She knew nanites could work wonders when left alone, but the extent of the damage looked like something that only Solus or even Primus himself could fix.

“So just how did a nice girl like you end up with the likes of him?” Knockout leaned back against one of his workbenches, looking at her with servos crossed over his chest. It didn’t sound like an accusation, but Windblade still heard it like one. She’d learned her lesson from the likes of Tarantulas- some people will pretend to be your friend just to hurt you all the more. And, after all, she was still on the run. Just because he was willing to help Starscream didn’t mean she would be given the same courtesy if he knew what she’d been accused of.

“We… helped each other out,” she said. That was the most basic version of the truth, and Starscream made no sound in protest. Knockout tilted his head as if in thought, because of course there was more to it than that, and he studied Windblade like he was wondering if she was really there in front of him. 

“I swear I’ve seen your face somewhere before… with all those squiggles on it, you think it’d be hard to forget.” He waved a hand in front of his face to indicate her own Cityspeaker markings. “Some kind of new fashion statement?”

Windblade resisted the urge to rub her digits hard across her cheeks, to try and scrape off the last remnants of pigment that were still giving her away. “Something like that...”

And that seemed to be good enough for Knockout. If he’d been watching the trial, maybe he just didn’t pay very close attention. Or maybe he knew exactly who she was and just didn’t care very much. He had his priorities in order, at least, as he switched his attention from Windblade to the cracked LCD monitor beside Starscream.

“I hope you understand I’m only doing this for free because I expect you to tell me  _ everything _ , Starscream.” Knockout pressed something that let out a high-pitched sound, almost making Windblade jump. “Where the Pit you’ve been all this time, for starters.”

“Can it wait until I’m not in danger of going offline?” Starscream spoke through clenched teeth, still refusing to look at anyone.    
“You’re  _ not  _ going to go offline while I’m around, you idiot, so  _ speak. _ ” Knockout held a scanner, moving it slowly over Starscream’s prone frame. “Tell me just how you turned yourself into a barely-walking thresher.” He might have had genuinely atrocious bedside manner, or he might have just been working a ploy to get Starscream worked up enough that he couldn’t stop himself from talking just to correct him. Either way, Starscream’s helm snapped forward with a growl. 

“It wasn’t  _ me, _ ” he snapped. “It was Rattrap. Tarantulas… they did this...” His vocaliser trailed into static, and he clenched his jaw shut again. 

“I see.” Knockout looked over to Starscream as the scanner seemed to transmit its findings to the monitor. “They… kept you prisoner?”

Starscream said nothing, keeping his optics closed. 

“Well. Then it really  _ is  _ a miracle you’re still alive.” Knockout whistled air through his denta, and then set himself to work analysing the scanner results. His stare was intent, like he was eager to lose himself in the screen so he didn’t have to think any more about what being Rattrap’s prisoner meant. 

Windblade, meanwhile, was feeling more useless by the nanoklick, wanting to stay out of the way but also wanting to do  _ something  _ other than stand around with her hands folded. She had no medic training, and Velocity wasn’t like Nautica in always trying to train her friends to do part of her job for her, but surely she wasn’t supposed to just hang around in a corner waiting for Starscream to cheat death. She couldn’t ask him anything with Knockout around, since Starscream clearly didn’t want to say too much around him…

But there were some things she  _ could  _ ask Knockout himself, now that his patient was recovering. And he seemed much more co-operative than Starscream, anyway. 

“How do you know Starscream, Knockout?”

He glanced over at her like he’d almost forgotten she was there. “I was one of his sire’s great physicians, during the good old days. Of course Seekers usually scorn any help from  _ grounders,  _ but when you’re the best in your field they tend to overlook your lack of wings. Even then they’ll tell you to frag off as soon as they’re all patched up. No offence intended, er...”

She wasn’t sure which part she was supposed to be offended by, mostly because she didn’t understand even half of what he’d just said. But she could at least recognise that he was asking for her name. “Windblade.”

Then she braced herself for a look of recognition and scorn, but Knockout only scoffed. “Seekers do love putting ‘Wind’ in their names, don’t they? I blame Windscythe himself for the trend, the pompous old-” He stopped in his tracks when his optics landed on Starscream. There was no glare, no growl, not even a warning hiss that whatever Knockout was saying was dangerous. Yet the medic still looked guilty, like he’d just committed a crime with his vocaliser.

“Sorry. Sometimes I still forget...” His talons were hanging suspended in the air in front of his monitor, like he’d also forgotten whatever task he was in the middle of. Windblade looked at Starscream, his optics pointed aimlessly up at the ceiling, his face set in blank stone, and wondered if she should ask who Windscythe was. But then Starscream’s jaw shifted, strings of half-dry energon between his lips.

“What happened to Vos?” he asked. 

After a moment’s pause, Knockout’s digits tapped rapidly across his keyboard as if to make up for the past few klicks of work he’d lost to his memory banks. “It’s better that you don’t know-”  
“Knockout.” Starscream didn’t snarl, or screech, or snap with his demand. It was a simple statement, but said with such force that both Windblade and Knockout had no choice but to pay attention. “ _What. Happened. To Vos?_ ”

Knockout was frozen in place, meeting Starscream’s expectant optics with his own full of regret. It was the same expression he had when he first saw Starscream, bleeding out in the dark and laughing with his last few breaths.

“They burned it down,” the medic told him. “Hollowed out the foundations. Filled it in with water. It’s now the planet’s largest sea.” Then he looked down at his typing talons, before he could see Starscream’s reaction. Windblade saw it unfold for herself, his optics whirring wide and his jaw trembling. He blinked several times over, though his eyes were completely dry. He had nothing left to give, not even in sorrow. Even though Windblade did not know what Vos was, did not know what it meant to Starscream, it was easy to guess what it once had been. It was another city, one like Technotro... like Iacon. But instead of having its name changed and history paved over, it was simply eradicated from existence. 

“They said everyone had died at Vos,” Knockout went on, unable to keep his voice hollow. “I saw some of the bodies myself. But they left you alive?”

“Yes.” Starscream gulped. “They did.”

“And then they did… this, to you?”

Starscream closed his optics instead of nodding. “What did they do with the bodies, Knockout?” It was a rasp, like a voice on low battery, like merely asking it drained all of the energy he had left.

“...I don’t know,” Knockout told him. “I’m sorry.” 

And he really  _ was _ sorry, for so much that Windblade couldn’t even begin to comprehend as an outsider. Starscream and Knockout were both victims of Rattrap, of the technorganic society he had created, and they knew each other's pain despite spending centuries apart. She felt like she was trespassing on the moment, like she shouldn’t have been a witness to it, and she couldn’t even bring herself to look at Starscream. She didn’t want to see him broken, mute, like he’d been in the council chamber. She didn’t want to see  _ anyone  _ like that. 

But then Knockout shook his helm, and with one last swipe of his hand across his screen he turned to his workbench to start preparing for the next stage of surgery. The brief sorrow would be all that he would allow himself. Maybe he was just desensitised to it.

“There’s major points of weakness around your endoskeleton,” he said over his shoulder, “and your armor will need to be entirely regrown to support them. The protoform breach will need a full solder patch as well to stop it bursting open again.”

Starscream groaned. “Is that all?”

“Those are just the things that  _ will _ kill you eventually,” Knockout told him, wielding what looked like a pair of minuscule tweezers in one hand and a scalpel in the other. “There’s plenty more that  _ might _ .”

Despite the medic’s bleak prognosis, he set to work swiftly. Windblade once again watched from overhead, waiting for a moment to be useful as Starscream was cut open. But Knockout never asked for a piece of equipment or even for the spotlight to be moved aside. In fact, he never spoke at all, not until he’d removed every armor piece from Starscream’s chest and pulled the underlying protoform apart.

“You’ll need to keep your chamber open for this part,” he said. “It’s a delicate procedure.”

Starscream, who had also been silent as he averted his gaze from his own innards, grunted as he released the internal lock on his spark chamber-

Oh, Primus. Not again. It didn’t matter that Windblade had already seen his spark, even under circumstances that she didn’t want to remember. She had to look away, a hand across her optics just to be safe, keeping her distance so she wouldn’t even see the glow, and she heard Knockout let out a loose laugh. 

“Very polite, isn’t she?”    
“Leave her alone,” Starscream snapped, “and just get on with it.”

Apart from feeling somewhat grateful for Starscream coming to her defense (if only so he could get off the operating table as soon as possible), Windblade could barely control how mortified she was to be in that room at that moment. How could Knockout be so casual, so  _ comfortable  _ with staring right at a mech’s naked spark with his life in his hands? Velocity had never had to deal with sparks like that, in fact no medic on Caminus would ever think of asking a patient to open their chamber. If there was ever a problem that severe, like spark parasites, that was for the Mistress to deal with. It made sense, after all. Sparks were the gift from Primus, so the voice of Primus was the only one who had the right to see them. Whenever Caminus’ hotspot brought forth a new generation, it was she who would greet the sparks into their frames. She had seen almost the entire population at birth, and knew more than anyone else how sacred their chambers were. 

That was Caminus. On Cybertron, apparently they were open for anyone who asked nicely. And Knockout hadn't even asked  _ that  _ nicely. Was that part of what Starscream had meant by ‘using’ sparks? She had a whole new set of questions to ask him as soon as Knockout was gone. 

“Well, you’re not going to die,” the medic sighed after almost thirty klicks of surgery that Windblade had looked away from. “Not immediately, anyway. So long as the patch holds up, your nanites should finish the rest of the repairs by themselves. But...”

Windblade cautiously uncovered her optics, making sure all sparks were out of the way as they should be, and found Starscream looking somewhat less like a scrap pile. His chest plating had been entirely stripped back, the razor-embedded plates sheared down to short ledges, and his mouth had pale lines where the thick solder-scars had marked him before. His wings were still a useless jumble on his back, the cables hanging loose and some metal sheets barely clinging on, but Knockout didn’t look like he was going to operate on them. 

“But  _ what _ ?” Starscream sat up as best he could, drilling his optics impatiently into the medic. This time Knockout didn’t try to push him back down flat. 

“Starscream,” he said firmly, “I need to know what they did to your spark.”

Starscream blinked once, narrowing his optics as an after-effect. “Isn’t it  _ obvious _ ? They turned my chest into a _ guillotine _ .”

“I’m not talking about the casing,” Knockout corrected. “I’m talking about the spark itself.” His expecting gaze did not shift once from Starscream, despite how the other mech averted his glare. 

“I don’t know… what they did.”

“Because the damage is unlike anything I’ve ever seen.” Knockout marched over to the largest screen set up near the surgical slab, rotating it around so that Starscream could see the readings on it. “There are  _ burns  _ on your casing, like… like the spark was trying to eject itself from your frame. When I said you should be dead, I was quite serious.”

“I told you,” Starscream insisted, “I don’t  _ know  _ about any of that-”

“Even when you’re just lying down like this, it’s like it doesn’t know which way is up or down, and it’s not just because my equipment is faulty. And there’s debug logs in your processor that make no sense, constant dead-ends and missing messages that I’ve only seen on old Empurata victims. It’s like you’ve been missing parts that-”

“I am not in the mood for an interrogation, Knockout!” Starscream quite literally exploded, ripping himself off the table and swatting Knockout’s hands aside so that the printouts he was wielding went flying. “You’re the _ genius  _ doctor, you should be able to figure out whatever the frag is wrong for  _ yourself _ !” Then he shoved past the medic, not even looking at Windblade as he went for the door.

“And just where do you think you’re going?” Knockout stood with his empty hands on his hips, watching Starscream wrench the door open. 

“ _ Away. _ I don’t want to  _ exist  _ right now. Just... get away from me!” He disappeared into the furious blizzard outside, and Windblade tried to catch the door before it slammed shut.

“Starscream, don’t go-!” She felt the icy chill blow in from outside, saw the tips of his broken wings vanish into the snow before her hand could reach him, but Knockout stopped her from going any further with a servo around her waist. 

“I wouldn’t,” he warned, letting the door close on the weight of its hinge as he slowly released her, only when she stopped trying to push against him. “Touch him while he’s in that state and he’ll likely just tear your servo off. And I won’t be putting it back on.”

“But…” Windblade stood staring at the door, as if she could see Starscream’s freezing frame in the distance through it. “Cybertron’s looking for him. If he gets seen, or-or caught, or-”

“I wouldn’t worry about that.” Knockout almost sounded bored as he began the second stage of cleanup, wiping down the operating table that was dripping with freshly spilled energon. “The organics mostly stay away from these parts. He’ll find another hole to crawl into for the time being and, when he’s ready, he’ll find his way back here.”

He sounded so sure, like he was psychic and could see Starscream trudging back already. Windblade wasn’t even sure if she  _ wanted  _ him to come back, since he was apparently so against being helped. Her priority was saving her friends and getting back home, and Starscream’s was…

Well, she actually had no idea what his agenda was, other than act like a complete aft. 

Then again… he’d been mutilated. He’d been turned into a torture device. He’d seen his kind slaughtered. Was she really expecting him to be anything but angry?

“I’ve fixed his physical wounds, but he’ll need to sort out his mental ones by himself,” Knockout went on, like he really  _ was _ psychic and reading her thoughts as they came. “And to start doing that, first he needs to be alone.”

Windblade found herself sitting on the floor, her back to the door with her knees at her chest. “His wings, though,” she pointed out. “You didn’t fix them.”

“They can’t be fixed. And I think he knows that. Which is another reason why he should be left alone.” Knockout punctuated the sentence with a metallic  _ clang  _ of the disposal chute’s lid closing, and the sound pierced Windblade’s audios as she considered the true weight of his verdict. He’d said he specialised in fixing flyers, those like her with wings and propulsion systems and everything else to worry about, and if even he couldn’t make Starscream fly again… 

Primus.

“So what’s your side of the story, Windblade?” Knockout hosed down his tools under a low spray, so the hum of the cleanser didn’t overtake his voice. “What did they do to him?”

At first Windblade debated over how much to tell him. He probably had a good idea himself of what Starscream had been turned into, but she was the only eyewitness around that could confirm anything. She didn’t want to think back to any of it.

“They made him kill people,” she told him, her voice as hollow as the rest of her felt. “Other Cybertronians.”

Out of the corner of her optic, she saw him freeze for just a moment. 

“...I thought as much. When I saw what was left of those chest pieces. And they kept him blind?”

“With… razorsilk, yes.” Tarantulas’ vile weaving that she could still feel tearing into her protoform, like it was something alive and bristling. Knockout didn’t ask her to explain what it was, which made her think that it was something Tarantulas regularly employed against any and all Cybertronians he got his claws on. 

“That’s why they didn’t just cut his optics out,” he muttered to himself. “The blindfold would constantly cut into them… I imagine you were probably the first face he’d seen since he was imprisoned, then.”

Windblade hadn’t realised that. She hadn’t even considered it. Was that another reason why he’d gone through the trouble of saving her? Not just the matter of repaying a debt, but because he’d gone so long without seeing anyone, any _ thing  _ that once he had his vision back he wanted to preserve the first thing he saw...

Which happened to be her. 

She didn’t know how to feel about that.

“They made him... kill with his spark?” Knockout switched the hose off, though he kept his back to her. She nodded, watching him incline his helm ever so slightly over his shoulder.

“I see. I think I understand now.”

“Understand what?”

Knockout roughly dried off his hands, moving briskly with renewed effort. “If I’m right, then I can’t tell you. Patient confidentiality. And… it isn’t something for me to share, anyway.”

It must have had something to do with Starscream’s spark, and whatever happened to it during his imprisonment. It must have been personal. In which case, Windblade didn’t want to know it anyway. Bad enough having someone turn your spark into a spectacle, she wouldn’t want strangers knowing anything about it that she didn’t even know herself.

“They called him a... Sparkcracker.” She flinched as she said it, but even so she watched Knockout’s reaction for any recognition. If he had heard of such a thing, maybe he would tell her some more of what she  _ did  _ want to know. 

“A what?” He snapped his head around, still holding the stained rag aloft in his hand. “A spark _ cracker? _ ”

Windblade nodded again, wondering if she’d said something wrong. Knockout looked away, crushing the rag in his sudden vice grip.

“Primus… very insidious of them.” He sighed like it wasn’t something that surprised him… whatever ‘it’ was.

“What do you mean?” Windblade was getting tired of having to question everything, but Knockout (apparently) didn’t know she wasn’t from Cybertron. He would just assume she knew what he was talking about if she didn’t speak up.

“You know… the old sparkling stories.” Knockout leaned back against his workbench once he finished wiping it down. “Supposed to get us to behave when we’re that age. If we make too much noise at night then the Sparkeater will come gobble us up, the Sparkstealer will take us away to Unicron and the Sparkcracker… well, he was only ever brought up around  _ very  _ bad little ones. I had more than a few nightmares about him...” He trailed off while looking aside, then started throwing aside his clean tools into various compartments.

“They’ve turned our children’s stories into reality,” he muttered, “and our intimacy into murder.” 

Windblade heard him, but even if she understood she didn’t know what to say, didn’t know if she should say anything at all. The floor was making her feel numb, but there was nowhere else for her to sit but the surgical slab. Her wings were still wrecked, though thankfully not as badly as Starscream’s, but Knockout was unlikely to give her free repairs as well. 

She felt like she had to leave. Even if organics didn’t often enter these parts, they’d be searching everywhere for her and Starscream. If she stayed put then she was constantly in danger. 

But there was nowhere to go. She couldn’t just try to hop between wrecked buildings dodging the guards and soldiers and drones and whatever else Rattrap would have out looking for her. For all she knew, Knockout would sell her out in a nanoklick if the reward was good enough...

The medic seemed to be watching her over his shoulder as he organised his implements, as if waiting for her to dart for the exit. But then, when his hands were empty, he crossed his arms over his chest and faced her with a curious glint in his optics. 

“You’re not from around here, are you, Windblade?”

So she’d been found out. Yet she almost laughed at how long it had taken. 

“What gave it away?”

“If you were raised on Cybertron and came face-to-spark with a creature called the Sparkcracker, you would be looking a lot more hopeless,” he informed her. “Probably catatonic, even.”

“Not too late for the shock to still kick in...” It was strange to hear that she apparently didn’t look defeated. She  _ felt  _ pretty hopeless, at least. But even with her armor gone, something on her outside was still shielding her from what was within. 

“Where are you from, then?” Knockout tilted his head to one side, which seemed to be his tell for when he was waiting for answers. And Windblade wasn’t sure if she should’ve been giving him any more.

“I don’t know if I can trust you.” She stated it plainly so she wouldn’t need to skirt around it. After all the scrap she’d gone through, she figured she was allowed to be a little paranoid. And Knockout didn’t look surprised anyway, despite all the trouble he’d gone to with repairing Starscream.

“I see. Well, you’re injured yourself. So how about you tell me while I fix you?” He patted the operating slab, the same one she’d watched Starscream straddle life and death upon.

“You know I don’t have credits.” 

Knockout shrugged, even though he hadn’t even wanted to touch her when he first found out she was broke. “I can take the information as payment.”

It sounded too good to be true. Like a trap. It was just too easy, surely. Her back was to the door, she just had to bar it open and vanish like Starscream into the snow… 

Into certain death. 

“Alright.” Windblade pushed to her peds, pulling herself onto the table. “But... stay away from my spark.” 

Knockout raised an eyeridge, like he was confused she would even ask such a thing, before assembling a new set of tools.

“At this rate, I might as well turn myself into a worker drone…” That was his only complaint as he opened up her spinal strut, leaving her unsedated so he could make sure he wasn’t making any mistakes in realigning her nodes. Through gritted denta and hisses of sharp pain Windblade told him of Caminus, her friends, the Mistress, the quest she’d given them all. She missed out her connection to Metroplex, only so she didn’t have to explain once more what a Cityspeaker was. She told him of being tricked by Tarantulas, dragged off to see Starscream and, in a blind flash, somehow releasing him from his bondage. He asked no questions, made no interruptions other than asking her to move her servos and wings. Since he had nothing to ask when she finished, Windblade thought she would offer some questions of her own to him.

“So... What’s a Seeker?” She remembered him mentioning the word, referring to Starscream as one. 

“It’s the name for flight-enabled frametypes,” he answered, dragging something cold and damp around her neck. “You and Starscream. The rest of us can’t take on aerial altmodes. Frames too heavy, sparks not efficient enough at metabolising all the energy you’d need for it, things like that.” 

“I see.” So she wasn’t just a Cityspeaker. She was a Seeker, and by Knockout’s definition so was Maxima. She’d never considered that being able to fly was something that would set bots apart from each other. Caminus didn’t have much room in its skies for flight to make much of a difference to travel, and the presence of wings was only ever considered for things like finding the centre of balance for difficult stage choreography. Even when leaving the planet’s gravitational pull it wasn’t like you could fly out very far before fuel started running out. 

But she’d seen Cybertron from above. It was a very different place, both from the outside and within. She’d seen it with Airazor (was she a Seeker as well? More importantly, was she still free despite how she’d helped Windblade?), and though it had looked beautiful at a glance she now knew that the beauty only grazed the very skin of the planet. Cybertronians, organic and otherwise, seemed obsessed with categorising everyone, putting them into neat boxes that they could endorse or ignore. ‘Seekers’ were just another box, like ‘technorganics’. On Caminus, bots were defined by what they did. Bodyguards, scientists, dancers and singers and performers, their roles were far more important than what they looked like. 

And Cityspeakers, of course. Even if their jobs felt empty sometimes, listening for voices millions of light years away that hardly ever spoke, at least it was something they were meant to do. A Cityspeaker could understand Metrotitans, therefore they listened to them. A bodyguard was strong, therefore they protected. 

And a Seeker could fly, therefore they did.

She was beginning to understand the Cybertronian mindset, she thought. Though there was one label that still eluded her. 

“And… what’s a sire?” 

Knockout was facing her as she asked, examining the front of her wings, and he looked at her like she’d asked him who Solus Prime was. 

“What’s a si-? Primus, you  _ have  _ been living on an asteroid, haven’t you?”

Windblade felt her jaw clench. “A Metrotitan, actually. And I’m sick of people acting shocked that I don’t know things when they won’t fragging  _ tell  _ me anything about them.” 

She was fully aware that she was just doing exactly what she’d frowned on Starscream for, being unco-operative in spite of herself. But, Solus, she was sick of feeling like an idiot and even more sick of being treated like one.

Knockout looked at her, but not with the expected roll of his optics. He seemed to be studying her, analysing her even, and not just for his medical assessment. 

“Caminus has a hotspot, doesn’t it?” he asked. 

“Well, yeah. Of course it does.” She wondered if the answers to her own questions were as obvious to Knockout as that one was to her. 

“And that’s where you came from. Where everyone on the colony came from.”

“Yes…” She was glad that he knew that much for himself, at least, but she had a sinking feeling nonetheless. Like the floor was about to disappear from under her at any moment. 

“So you don’t know that there are other ways for bots to be born.”

And there was the moment, as if on cue. She thought she’d misheard him at first, which gave her some time to prepare herself.

“Other… what?”

Knockout looked at her again, and this time it was with a strange kind of sympathy. Starscream had had the same look, when he told her that Caminus must be a lonely place.

“You probably weren’t told for a reason,” he said, working on her left wing to divert his optics somewhere. “Maybe to keep the population down and ease resource strain… but I’ll tell you anyway.” He stood in front of her, commanding her full attention as he folded his digits together.

“Windblade,” he inhaled deeply, his vents almost fluttering, “you can carry sparks within you. Within your chamber.” He unfolded a single talon to point to the very centre of her chest, though he knew not to touch the plating itself. “Almost all femmes can. A new spark, away from any hotspot or even the Well itself.”

Windblade stared at Knockout’s claw, at the bare protoform on her chest, where she could almost see her chamber thrumming beneath the layers of mesh. 

Her own chamber was a hotspot. She was a walking Well of All Sparks. She could make a new life, a new spark from her own. If Knockout wasn’t lying to her. But why would he? 

She could carry sparks. Lightbright could as well. Maxima and Chromia and Vertex and Nautica and Velocity, they could all incubate a new generation… 

And they’d never even known. 

“I…? How…?” It felt impossible. It felt like heresy. Sparks were Primus’ property, his  _ gift  _ to the universe. And yet Windblade could take that role as well? The  _ Mistress of Flame _ could?

Did she know this? She had to, surely, she knew everything about Primus.

“Spark bonding, mainly.” Knockout’s answer sounded distant, like he was in a different room even though he was right in front of her. “That’s another thing you haven’t heard of before, isn’t it?”

“I… no, not until I met Star…” Starscream had mentioned sparkbonding, at least, though he’d been too preoccupied with thinking she was an idiot to explain it. 

“I don’t think I’ve ever given this talk to another adult.” Knockout laughed as he admitted it, like it was something embarrassing. “It’s a little strange... well. When a mech’s spark-” 

He held his left fist aloft. 

“And a femme’s spark-” 

Then his right fist. 

“Are drawn together...”

He brought both hands parallel in front of him, holding them so the talons faced each other and then entwined.

“They merge to create a new life. A sparkling. The mech is the sire, and the femme is the carrier. They create a child and raise it together until it reaches adulthood- which is what you and your other Camiens are simply born into. It’s a very close bond. Almost unbreakable. So when someone speaks of their sire or carrier, you know they speak of them with respect.”

He spoke slowly, which must have been for Windblade’s benefit as she struggled to integrate this new knowledge into everything she already knew- everything she  _ thought  _ she’d known. 

“The funny thing is,” Knockout went on, “we always thought Seekers had to be born from bonds. No-one remembered them ever coming from the Well of All Sparks, you see. But it sounds to me like Caminus just took the part of the Well that created Seekers away with him.” 

Windblade found herself nodding, though not in response to anything. She just couldn’t keep her head still, rocking back and forth while the processor within felt like it had been doused in static and gasoline.

“I think I need to lie down.”

“I imagine you would. And I need to see if your spinal circuitry is aligned anyway.” Knockout even left a (fairly) clean rag on the table for her to cushion her aching head with as she lay flat on her front, staring ahead into nothing. She didn’t even feel Knockout soldering wires within her together or pulling her various wing plates to and fro. Her repairs seemed inconsequential, the ability to fly meaningless compared to what her spark chamber could apparently do. 

With a mech, like Starscream. Their sparks were supposed to create new ones? That was why she’d been magnetised to him. His spark was pulling on hers, as hers was pulling on his. It was no trickery, no vile mechanism put in by Tarantulas, it was simply what their bodies were  _ meant _ to do.

Yet it felt wrong. Not just because it had been supposed to kill her… because she hadn’t known what it was at the time. She had no idea that baring your chamber to another was supposed to be an act of trust, and bonding, and loyalty. Yet Rattrap had twisted that into something unholy.

So Windblade finally understood why Starscream had been so disgusted, why he’d tried to peel himself apart. It was like if a hotspot had been turned into a smelting pool. It was  _ desecration  _ of Primus himself _. _

That was why the Mistress hadn’t told Camiens of what they were capable of, then. The risk of things going wrong, if not on such a grand scale as Rattrap had done, was simply too great. Who were they, Primus’ children and followers, to think they could take his place and create new life?

They were not like Cybertronians. They would not repeat their mistakes. Windblade swore this to herself, even as she heard her spark’s high-pitched hum and felt even more keenly the empty space within it. She’d thought that it was just the hole left by Primus, the same one all Camiens had that they would only fill when they finally returned to his side. She knew better now, and she wished she didn’t.

Even so, she at least now understood so much more about Cybertron and the technorganics. Everyone had parents. Families. A permanent bond that would never leave them, stronger than even the sorority and fraternity groups on Caminus.

It sounded comforting.

“So… Starscream had a sire and carrier?” Windblade asked, as Knockout worked a blowtorch on low-heat over the fresh metal patch on her strut. “And you worked for them?”

“Only his sire. I never saw very much of his carrier. Cloudchaser, her name was. She had her own physicians, the kind who could deal with sparklings as well as checkups. Always busy arranging ceremonies, throwing parties, anything for an excuse to serve up high-grade and show off in the sky.”

“They sound like they were important.” She let Knockout ease her upright once more, and she watched the moving shadows of her restored wings with some small measure of relief. But, standing beside her, Knockout seemed to be thinking once more.

“Windblade,” he said somewhat carefully, “you don’t know who Starscream really is, do you?”

She knew plenty enough about him, she thought. He was self-sabotaging and needlessly hostile. He was a walking contradiction, saving her with the last of his strength and then acting like he’d wished he’d just left her behind. But, if he’d really known Starscream well, Knockout already knew all that for himself. So she stayed silent, waiting for his own answer.

“Vos was the city of the Seekers,” he told her. “When it existed. And Windscythe was the last Winglord, leader of his people. He had three sons, and one daughter.” He held up a cyan-streaked hand to count them off. “Slipstream, Skywarp, Thundercracker...”

“And Starscream,” Windblade finished for him, her voice muffled under the slow weight of realisation.

“He likely would have taken over Vos from his father, if… if things had been different. He would have been one of the most powerful mechs on the planet.” Knockout’s vocaliser dwindled, as if a thousand regrets had suddenly caught up with him all at once. He wasn’t trying to fight them off. Windblade was silent because she was thinking, reframing her understanding of Starscream and how he acted, why he did the things he did. 

He was supposed to be a leader. He was supposed to be a figure of admiration, maybe even worship, and he’d been morphed into something from his people’s nightmares. 

And then, through the thick veil of renewed horror, she remembered the other thing Metroplex had tried to warn her about.

“He was a prince…?” She knew the word only from ancient records of the Cybertronian Empire’s old power structures, of emperors and kings. A prince was someone just below that of the ruler, though they’d be the one to take over if needed. Knockout seemed to consider it for a moment, as if he had to remember himself what the word meant.

“You could say that, yes.”

Metroplex had known about Starscream. He’d seen him before he was taken, before he became the Sparkcracker. Yet… like the rest of Cybertron, he’d thought he was dead. 

If Starscream was supposed to be important, maybe he’d known Metroplex before everything went wrong. Maybe he could help her reach him again. 

If she saw him again… if he ever came back. But surely he had to. There was nowhere else for either of them to go. And until then, well, Windblade could only wait with her helm throbbing and spark ebbing, one too full and the other far too hollow.

“Knockout, you don’t mind if I… rest just a while… just until…?” She didn’t think she could really rest at all, not even if she was forced into stasis lock, but she had nothing else to do with herself. Knockout, at least, seemed to recognise that, and when he switched the burning spotlight off she didn’t know the darkness would be such a relief.

“Trust me, Windblade,” he sighed as she turned her heavy helm away. “You’ll need all the rest you can get.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And that's all I've got for now. I'm still working on the outline for future chapters and with luck I'll be able to work on them throughout the rest of winter and maybe spring next year, though there's no telling right now what the schedule will be. For now, I hope what I've managed so far has been worthwhile and that you'll join me next time for when the story continues :)


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sorry for how long this took I was, how you say, distracted by video games for two months straight. but I'm better now I promise maybe. writing is hard :(

Nautica stopped tracking time at some point. She didn’t know exactly when she’d stopped, because she refused to look at her chronometer to check. It was the only point in her life where she was content with ambiguity. It was also, she thought, the only point where she was grateful not to be alone.

“What does your cell look like?” Afterburner asked her through the wall against her back, through a vocaliser that was plagued with a whine like a warning alarm. As if he was low on fuel, and his own voice had to keep reminding him that something was wrong as if he didn’t notice it himself.

Something was very, very wrong indeed. Nautica didn’t need a HUD blip or alert to tell her that much.

“The same as yours, I’d assume.” She didn’t need to raise her voice to be heard, didn’t need to raise her head, and she didn’t know if she even could. “There’s a recharge slab. Walls and floor padded with some kind of synthetic weave. Only exception is the plasma grid in front of me.” It was the same kind that had buzzed in front of her a few breems before, when she was herded into what must have been a holding cell with everyone else. This was one that looked fitted for a long-term stay. For days, or vorns, or...

“Yeah.” Afterburner’s sigh managed to save her processor from going down that spiral of doom. “Sounds the same as mine’s. Don’t know why they even give us a slab when we won’t be doing any recharging.”

“Likely the same reason why they gave us a trial when they were just going to find us guilty anyway,” Nautica reasoned alongside her own sigh. “Trying to convince us they’re the good guys. Trying to convince  _ themselves,  _ maybe _.” _ She far preferred analysing the orbital mechanics of Camien satellites to making guesses on the social minutiae of their afthole ancestors; but when one lacked a telescope or indeed a window to look out of, one couldn’t afford to be picky over what could keep one’s mind occupied. In Afterburner’s case, he seemed to be the kind who kept on talking so he didn’t have to think. 

“Why did they just lock us up again?” he asked. “They said we were being sent back to Caminus. They just have to put us back on the ship and we’ll happily leave all this behind.”

“Maybe they’re doing something to it,” Nautica suggested, grimacing as she thought of the  _ Hermitian  _ being infested by fur and scales and whiskers, all the hard work she put into keeping every surface and gear pristine just gone to waste. “Might be putting a tracker on it. Or a bomb.” For some reason, she found that worst-case scenario amusing. As if the Cybertronians thought getting rid of them all would be that easy, as if the  _ Hermitian  _ could really be so easily compromised. They could do anything short of dismantling it for scrap and it wouldn’t matter much. Whatever trick they tried to pull on her ship, Nautica would see it immediately. Because it was, after all,  _ her  _ ship.

“What about the others?” Afterburner pressed, in a tone that made it clear he didn’t want to think too hard about them for his own processor’s wellbeing. “You think they’re being held as well?”

“I’d assume we’re all being held the same way.” Then Nautica paused, remembering the reason they were being held in the first place. “Except maybe…”

“Windblade,” Afterburner finished the thought for her, saving her the guilt of turning it into an accusation. “She was the scapegoat, after all.”

That was a good way to look at it, Nautica thought. Windblade was just as much a victim as the rest of them, if not moreso because she was the main culprit of the so-called terrorist plot. Nautica knew it was all nonsense, an excuse to get them all off of Cybertron before they found out anything they weren’t supposed to know. Windblade had known Rattrap’s true intentions instantly, because she must have gotten close to something dangerous before she was captured. Whatever she saw in Metroplex, it was worth almost starting a war to hide. But if Cybertron really had such a monumental secret somehow related to the Titan, why invite a delegation in the first place? Why go to such trouble to welcome them just to frame them for a crime that hadn’t even happened?

Unless…

“Do you think she  _ did  _ do something to Metroplex?” Nautica raised her helm, and though Afterburner was out of sight she could also see him shaking his own furiously in denial. 

“Absolutely not. Why would she?”

It was the expected response. He had volunteered to defend Windblade all by himself, in front of a planet full of rabid beasts who likely wanted the Camiens dead on principle. He couldn’t entertain any thoughts that she wasn’t as innocent as the rest of them. 

Yet Nautica wondered, only briefly, if he was actually expecting an answer from her. Because she could think of several reasons why Windblade would do something after trying everything she could to get to the Titan, and she was sure none of the reasons were ones that Afterburner would want to hear. But then Nautica decided that there was at least one he  _ had  _ to hear.

“Might have been ordered by the Mistress,” she told him.” We all heard what she thought of the Cybertronians. And she speaks with Primus’ words.” 

‘ _ Apparently.’  _ That was the only part she didn’t voice, because thinking the Mistress would lie to her delegation and leave them to deal with the consequences of her own betrayal was treasonous enough. And she could hear Afterburner spluttering from having to even consider such a thing. She’d thought he’d have been used to her casual slander by now- he was one of the few people who ever heard it other than Windblade, because she knew that, despite all his warnings to stay quiet and his duties to the Mistress as a bodyguard of her chosen Speakers, he wouldn’t actually do anything about it. Maybe he thought if he just didn’t acknowledge something then it didn’t really happen- like quantum particles that change when observed. If he didn’t look, then things would not change, then he could carry on pretending that everything was as it should be. 

Until someone like Nautica came along and wrenched his head on its spinal strut, forcing him to see what was right in front of him all along. She could hear his vents gulping down air, preparing for a harsh and familiar reprimand. 

“Nautica, I know you’re not exactly known for being respectful, but that’s a  _ very _ dangerous thing to be saying. You’re suggesting that… that Mistress sent us on some kind of suicide mission?!” He turned it into a question with a crack in his vocaliser. “That we were just a distraction while Windblade was sent to sabotage Metroplex?”

Nautica had never heard Afterburner actually try to interpret her doubts and theories before, not when he usually just tried to change the subject before they were overheard. But there was no one to hear them and care when they were so many light years from home. Ironically, he probably felt safer to speak as a prisoner of a foreign power than walking around free on the streets of Caminus. 

For the first time in her life someone was hearing her, someone not on an ethics board or scientific panel, and they were actually  _ understanding  _ the terrible things she was suggesting. It was good. She just wished it hadn’t taken being imprisoned on charges of terrorism to break him out of Afterburner’s mental comfort zone.

“Worse things have happened in the history of our kind,” Nautica said, shrugging even though no one could see her. “You should hear some of the old stories Vertex likes to read.” The old Cybertronian archives, records rescued from the days of the Empire before Caminus and his people left, were all readily available to anyone who looked for them. They helped form narratives for theatre and paintings and sculptures, because though it was their own history it was so alien and unfamiliar that it was impossible to see anything of Caminus’ culture within it. Vertex read the records for inspiration, and Nautica read them to try and piece together what went wrong. 

“ _ Stories _ ,” Afterburner scoffed. “Meaning they didn’t actually happen.”

Nautica almost laughed at the irony of Afterburner now being the one to doubt in her place. Cybertron’s imperial history was so ancient and irrelevant to modern Caminus that there was no reason for anyone to lie about it. He didn’t realise that all that was known of Caminus’ own history was what the Mistress herself allowed them all to know.

“You can’t decide that for sure without even reading them, Burn.” She had to wonder, somewhat callously, if bodyguards like Afterburner were even taught how to read in the first place. 

“You know who writes those stories, Nautica? Winners. There’s only one side that we ever know about. There’s no… no peer-review, like what your kind do. There’s no rigorous testing over and over to make sure what you write down is undeniable fact. So no, I’m not gonna read something that I don’t even know is true or not. I’m interested in what  _ I _ know, which is what I see for myself in the here and now.”

He’d started off with a surprisingly good point, Nautica thought, but then she had to suppress a scowl when she heard the dismissive tone wrapped around ‘ _ her kind _ ’, subconsciously comparing it to how the Mistress had referred to the techno-organics. It didn’t matter that Afterburner couldn’t see her expression, she knew that it would show through her vocaliser if she let it simmer on her mouth. She’d had good practice at putting up with all the jokes and snide condescension that came with her career- a fast processor didn’t get you much in a place like Caminus, not when the frame that carried the processor was all people cared to see. Her whole life was dedicated to proving empirical truth and firmly separating real from fake, black from white. It was what Primus had made her for, and she accepted it, even when it meant having to debate people like Afterburner on the painfully obvious. 

“So just what  _ do  _ you know, Afterburner?” 

“One,” the bodyguard paused, and Nautica could tell he was actually raising his digits to count off his facts as they slowly came, “the Mistress speaks for Caminus. Two, she dedicates her life to Primus and to keeping us all  _ safe _ . And three… we need to stop arguing and get the frag out of here.”

Nautica wanted to lie flat on her side, hearing how exhausted Afterburner was through the wall. They were only arguing because there was nothing else to do, nothing else except panic and worry, and like the other two options it did nothing to help them. He was right, if only about that one thing.

“Well. One out of three isn’t so bad.” She scoffed at how pointless the back-and-forth really was, once again scolding herself for not knowing how to talk to her own people without turning the conversation into a confrontation. Even those who were her friends sometimes felt like strangers if she said the wrong thing. Nautica thought of how Lightbright had exploded at Windblade, blaming her for ruining their mission, and she wondered if Lightbright was angry because her friend had done wrong or only because she had to suffer the consequences of that wrongdoing. If Windblade hadn’t been caught and only confessed to seeing Metroplex, whether or not she did anything to him, on their way home, would Lightbright still have reacted the same way? How important was the morality of the decision compared to the consequences?

Nautica hadn’t considered such things in stellar cycles, not since she came up with her first pilot study. She’d wanted to examine patterns of quantum mechanics in macro scale, analysing the usual midnight crowds of Caminus on one of the busiest streets and then subtly manipulating them to see if they’d act in ways that could disrupt and predict the movement of quantum particles. It had been rejected, of course, because she’d need the consent and approval of every single Camien on the street for it to be ethical, and she’d been furious because it wasn’t like she was trying to hack into their processors and tell them to walk right instead of left. 

But now, she finally realised, the extent of the manipulation wasn’t the point. It was the fact that unwilling participants were being involved at all. If the Mistress had given Windblade instructions to sabotage Metroplex, then the rest of the Camiens brought along were just unwilling participants. They were the civilians in the street, with no idea of what they were really involved in, with no say in what would happen.

_ ‘...I don’t think I’ll ever complain about the ethics board rejecting one of my proposals ever again’.  _ Nautica buried her head in her hands, pressing her palms against her optics, like trying to block out her HUD. She was overthinking and overcomplicating every thought she had, just to avoid the only terrifying truth that mattered; they were in prison, with no easy way out. The reason  _ why _ didn’t really matter at all, and the fact that it didn’t matter scared Nautica because it was the only thing she could focus on-

Until Afterburner spoke. 

“Someone’s coming.”

Nautica didn’t know what he could hear that she couldn’t, but a nanoklick later there was a  _ woosh  _ as a door opened out of sight and heavy footsteps thumped the ground. Nautica saw him first as he marched in front of the two cells; it was the red mech from Rattrap’s personal guard, the Cybertronian who looked like a Camien. She couldn’t remember his name. 

“Rise and shine, prisoners. On your feet.” He held an intimidating cannon in one hand, hefting its thick barrel onto his other hand so he could hold it steady. It was a clear warning- if either of them made an unwelcome move, he could aim it at them in less than a nanoklick. Nautica slowly stood up, keeping her hands balled by her sides, and she assumed Afterburner did the same because the guard soon grunted another order at them. 

“Show your hands. Palms first, digits stretched.” Nautica uncurled her fingers, showing she was unarmed. Even if she had some kind of weapon stashed away, she wouldn’t know what to do with it. 

“Why are we being held here?” Afterburner asked. “You were supposed to be sending us back to Caminus. That was what the  _ trial _ decided.” He spat out that one word, knowing full well that it hadn’t been a trial so much as an inquisition. Nautica had seen it the same way the rest of Cybertron had, through a vidlink beamed to a tiny screen in the holding cells. 

“You’re being held for interrogation,” the guard informed them both. “You’ll be free to leave when we’ve made sure you ain’t got nothing else to hide.” Then he turned to leave the same way he entered, but his loud steps didn’t drown out Afterburner’s voice pelting at his back.

“Interrogation?! You already got what you wanted, the whole planet hates us! What else could we possibly give you people?!”

Nautica moved closer to the edge of her cell as the guard took his leave, trying to keep him in her sight as she angled her head behind the buzzing plasma grid. He clearly wasn’t listening to Afterburner, but he was currently the only link either of them had to the outside world. If he left, there was no knowing when he’d be back, not without Nautica looking at her chronometer and knowing how long they’d really been left to rot was more than she could bear. She didn’t want to know anything, for the first time in her life she wanted to be stupid and blissfully ignorant and know nothing at all so she could just stay innocent and go home...

But she knew the guard’s name. She remembered it. Chromia had been arguing with him, and she’d called him...

“Ironhide?” 

There was a  _ woosh  _ of the door opening once more, but his footsteps stopped.

“Your name’s Ironhide, right?” she asked again. 

“Yeah,” Afterburner sneered, “he’s one of Rattrap’s pets.”

Nautica ignored him, but she pressed herself closer to the edge of her cell so Ironhide couldn’t do the same to her. “Where are our friends, Ironhide? What are you doing to them?”

There was silence for a few nanoklicks, and Nautica feared that the guard had left the cell block after all. But then he walked back, his steps slower but still loud as he stopped in front of her. Seeing him up close, he didn’t look scary or threatening even with the giant cannon in his grip. He just looked tired.

“As I said, the ones still left are being interrogated,” he informed her with a weary glossa. “You two’ll be next.”

“The ones _ left _ ...?!” Nautica realised the implications in the second it took for her to try and charge through the grid of molten energy in front of her, the only thing stopping her from grabbing Ironhide by his shoulders. “What happened to them?! What did you  _ DO _ !?” She hissed as the heat from the plasma grid started to sizzle her armor, but she wouldn’t step back. She wouldn’t let Ironhide stand there and ruin all the hope she still had. She wouldn’t accept that her friends… that any one of them had been-

“Now calm yourself down, lil’ lady.” Ironhide narrowed his optics, staring down at her like he wanted to nudge her away just so she’d stop burning herself. “Ain’t no one been  _ killed _ . Some have just… managed to slip away.” He muttered like it was an embarrassment he didn’t want to admit it, but Nautica stepped back as her legs started to shake. Did he mean Velocity and Hot Shot? Or had others managed to join them?

“Who got away?” She had to ask, though she doubted Ironhide would tell her. He started to leave again, his head turned away, but something anchored his peds in place. 

Was he allowed to tell them such things? 

Did he want to tell them anyway?

“I only know ‘bout one.” Ironhide was almost whispering, still not looking at Nautica. “Windblade, her name was. She escaped while being transferred for interrogation. And we won’t let it happen again, so don’t be getting any stupid ideas.” He gave his warning while walking away, and when he was out of sight Nautica let herself collapse on the floor, lying flat with cold steel tiles at her back.

“Windblade got out…?” Afterburner was quiet, like he didn’t want to jinx things by speaking loud enough for Unicron to hear, but from the direction of his voice it sounded like he was on the floor as well. “Solus, I hope she’s safe.”

“She will be.” Nautica sighed, releasing all her worst fears for now. “She’s smart. Smarter than me in some ways.”

“Why, Nautica, are you being  _ humble _ ? Didn’t think you had it in you.”

Nautica usually didn’t respond well to sarcasm, sometimes because she didn’t even recognise it and other times because she took it as mockery. But even if she’d thought Afterburner’s tone was malicious, she was too numb from relief to bite back. 

“Accepting that you can’t know everything is the first step towards knowing as much as you can,” she said, a recitation she’d copied and underlined hundreds of times in every single datapad she used for notes. “Windblade’s smart in the Caminus way. She knows how to talk to people. Even if the trial was just a public humiliation, she spoke so well that I bet at least one person watching was convinced that she’s innocent.” In that way, Nautica was glad that it was Windblade instead of herself that had managed to escape. Even if she was public enemy number one for most of Cybertron… there had to be at least one person out there who’d be willing to help her. It was statistically impossible for there  _ not  _ to be!

“I suppose when you can talk to Titans, regular people aren’t much of a challenge,” Afterburner theorised. “Unless you’re Hot Shot.”

“ _ Everything’s  _ a challenge when you’re Hot Shot.” Nautica almost laughed, but then felt immediately guilty. If he was with Velocity, he might be okay. If not... 

“I hope he’s alright,” she mumbled, knowing that just hoping wouldn’t be good enough.

“Lightbright too…” Afterburner sighed, and there was a loud  _ clang  _ of his fist hitting something solid. “I should’ve protected her. She was my charge. I had one job, and I failed it-”

“Stop it, Afterburner.” Nautica turned her head towards the wall, still lying flat on the ground. “Stop it. Thinking like that isn’t going to help us.”

“But it’s true.”

“And you can kick yourself for it all you want once we’re back home. Pit, I’ll even let you report me to the Mistress for blasphemy. Because we  _ will  _ get back home.”

“But what if one of us says something these creeps don’t like? What if they change their minds about sending us back? What if…?”

Just as Nautica had feared, he was panicking now that he didn’t have a pointless argument to distract him. She’d seen Chromia deal with such situations with a hard slap across the cheek, but that probably wasn’t the right course of action (and Nautica couldn’t even see Afterburner, let alone assault him for his own good).

“They  _ can’t _ hurt us, Burn,” she insisted, reminding herself as well as him.. “Remember what Vertex said. They lay one servo on us and the Mistress would storm this place with Victorion and every bodyguard who can hold a weapon.” For all her heretical thoughts and doubts about her dear leader, Nautica was sure of that at least. The Mistress would see it as the highest insult, her own people harmed while on a pilgrimage to Primus’ shell, and she wouldn’t forgive it. 

“Right… yeah. Of course.” Afterburner gulped as he kept convincing himself. “Rattrap wouldn’t do anything to risk that.”

“Just think…” Nautica’s mind started to wander when she was sure Afterburner was calmed enough. “Maybe she’ll even wake Caminus himself- Primus, can you _imagine?!”_ Instead of sending out legions of ships loaded with soldiers, the Mistress could just fly the entire colony to Cybertron and catch in its orbit like a second moon, and the sight of Caminus looming overhead would be enough to send Rattrap scurrying to the core to hide. 

“Hopefully it won’t come to that,” Afterburner said, his cautious tone bringing a quick end to Nautica’s fanciful imagination. 

“Yeah… yeah. Of course,” she agreed.

But what was the point of living on a Metrotitan if you couldn’t enlist him to settle some serious scores? He’d been sleeping for millennia- Pit, there were no records of him assuming his walking mode even before he evacuated Cybertron. Only the Mistress had any idea of what Caminus the person was really like…

Only she knew what was going on in his mind. Nautica didn’t like that, and she  _ really  _ didn’t like that she’d only realised such a thing at that moment. 

This wasn’t her field of expertise. People scared her. They were unpredictable and loud and selfish, and when she tried to be scientific about them she just made her head hurt. But it was the only way she knew how to deal with them. It was the only way she knew how to make sense of…

Of everything.

‘ _ I should have been born on an asteroid. Somewhere far away. Somewhere I could mess with the laws of physics all I want and not even Primus himself can stop me. Maybe I’ll just find somewhere and go away when we get home. Just me and the Hermitian. My favorite journals. Some tools in my subspac-’  _

Subspace.

Her pocket.

The cabinet on the ship.

In just a few desperate short hops around her processor, she’d just discovered their ticket to freedom.

Subspace was still something not entirely understood, not even by quantum geniuses like Nautica. Every bot had their own little pockets to themselves, anomalies within their frames that allowed them to temporarily store things, be it possessions or parts of their own body that allowed them to take on compact alt modes that otherwise would have been impossible to have. It was hard enough to study them when, under normal circumstances, no-one could access another person’s subspace, only observe what was within it. 

Of course, Nautica rarely ever acted under ‘normal’ circumstances. It had taken her cycles and cycles of experimentation and funding favors from friends who had other friends who actually enjoyed scientific breakthroughs in between dance recitals… but she’d found a way to replicate her own subspace pocket into a separate vacuum. And then there was the even more difficult process,  _ expanding  _ that pocket into something that an entire person could fit inside. But she’d done it, Solus dammit! That was what her prototype subspace cabinet onboard the  _ Hermitian  _ came to be, though it was only by sheer coincidence that expanding the pocket also negated the fact that only she could access it (apparently the person-locked shield didn’t scale up with the vacuum itself, so there was only a tiny part of the whole cabinet that technically couldn’t be used by anyone other than herself).

But there was another unintended quirk of the cabinet, one that she’d only discovered a few cycles before she departed Caminus. She could pull things from it by dipping into her own subspace, because the two entities were copies of the same quantum space and therefore directly linked. Almost anything she put in the cabinet she could then pull out from her personal subspace, and vice versa. The only limit was size- she could only remove items from the cabinet that weren’t larger than her own subspace, of course. 

She didn’t need anything large. Just a wrench, or a screwdriver, something she’d surely have lying around in the cabinet...

She didn’t say anything to Afterburner, not wanting to get his hopes up before she even knew if she could do it, as she opened her subspace. It was empty on the surface, she was expecting that, but the space underneath was almost bottomless. She felt her digits go further, tensing as she grazed across objects and trinkets and something that seemed to flinch away as she touched it… she knew what she was looking for. She knew its shape, the texture of the handle, the buttons along its surface-

There it was, tight in her hand, rescued from the endless dark. Her laser screwdriver. An old thing pitted with rust, in dire need of upgrading, yet she almost wept when she saw it in her digits.

The easy part was done. The hard part was finding some weakness she could jam the tool into, some panel in her cell or crease or crevice around the plasma grid, or a bundle of wires that would lead her somewhere. She was silent as she searched her cell top to bottom, only speaking to keep up with Afterburner’s inane chatter that kept him sane. 

It was under the slab they’d given her to sleep on- a single fraying thread on the padded wall. She pushed the screwdriver into the broken seam, slowly ripping through layers of weave then plastic then soft metal until she reached the gilded back of a circuit board. She carefully pulled it out, keeping the wires intact in case an alarm was set off, and looked over it several times with ever-increasing glee. For all of Cybertron’s differences, their tech was the same as Caminus’, and she was ninety nine percent sure that what she was holding was a control chip. Maybe for the doors, maybe for the plasma grids. Whatever it was, she was going to tear it to pieces.

“Afterburner, I need you to do something,” she called out, her vocaliser cracking with barely-contained longing.

“What?”   
“Get ready to run.” She was already digging her screwdriver through the circuit wafers, breaking the thing apart with her bare hands and using her frame’s weight to yank out every wire. The lights above her flickered, and there was a harsh buzz that she almost thought was an alarm before it died completely, along with the plasma grid keeping her imprisoned. 

She was left frozen, just for a nanoklick, just long enough to process the fact that she could leave. She darted upright and out of her cell before any backup procedures could kick in, and she saw that Afterburner’s cell was still powered and humming. He stared at her in shock, and his optics were still bulging when Nautica found the button to deactivate his cell’s grid.

“H-holy slag…” He looked up and down, as if he was hallucinating his freedom, before Nautica marched forward and grabbed him by the elbow.

“What’d I tell you?!” she hissed. “RUN!” She was pulling him behind her, towards the door Ironhide must have used.

“But… but Lightbright!” he cried, now blocking the way out by moving in front of her. “The others! We have to find them!”

And then, a few seconds too late, the alarm went off, a shrieking klaxon that Nautica had to scream over. She grabbed Afterburner’s thick head to make sure he heard what she was telling him. 

“We don’t know where they are, Afterburner! Listen to me, if we go around this place trying to find them we’re just gonna get trapped and caught again. We can come back for them. Right now, we need to focus on getting the frag out of here. Just like you said. Okay?”

She wasn’t good at talking to people. She certainly wasn’t good at cheering them up, or getting them to agree with her, or even talking sense into them. But she’d used Afterburner’s own words to break through, and it actually worked. 

“Just like I said… right.” 

“So you lead the way,” Nautica told him over the blaring noise. “I’ll cover you.”

Afterburner looked at the screwdriver she held up so proudly, and for the first time in what felt like years he actually smiled. “You’ll strike fear into the sparks of every screw we come across.”


End file.
